So long, Farewell ... to CTPP from Elaine Murakami - ctpp-news

22 Sep 2015

To all my CTPP friends and colleagues -

I am busily cleaning up my office, and thought I'd take a break to send you a note to
say "Goodbye."
FOR CTPP TECHNICAL SUPPORT, PLEASE CONTACT
CTPPSUPPORT@CAMSYS.COM<mailto:CTPPSUPPORT@CAMSYS.COM>     OR CALL JJ ZANG AT
301-347-9130

I am happily headed toward my retirement, after 22.8 years with Federal Highway
Administration, 9 years with the Puget Sound Regional Council, and 2 years with Los
Angeles County.

It has been fun to recollect some of the projects I've worked on both at PSRC and
FHWA.  At FHWA, in particular, I pushed for more GIS at small and medium-sized MPOs and we
used an add-on to ArcGIS for TAZ delineation for CTPP2000 in the mid-1990s.   The
transportation community was a key supporter to retain the decennial census "long
form" in the Census 2000.   It has been fun to guide the CTPP for the CTPP2000 and
work with AASHTO on the 2006-2010  CTPP using ACS.   We have been leaders in developing
e-learning systems and using webinars for training.

It has been nearly 20 years since the Lexington KY GPS study (1996), which used a Sony
MagicLink hand-held computer and a Garmin GPS unit.  We had to pay over $200 for a 2 MB
memory card!   That is NOT a typo - it was 2 MB,  NOT 2 GB.  We truncated the GPS points
at the front end of the lat/long coordinates because we needed to save as much space as
possible while collecting 1-sec GPS points. This was done when "Selective
Availability" was still on.  https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/lextrav.pdf

Also, on the survey methods front, I worked on an SBIR project using web-based mapping for
conducting a household travel survey in 1998. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/trb/rsgrpt.pdf 
  And most recently, worked again with the Madison County COG and RSG on a Smartphone app
for a travel diary.

I hope you are aware of the Transportation Secure Data Center 
www.nrel.gov/tsdc<http://www.nrel.gov/tsdc> that I championed where we have been
archiving GPS travel survey data from MPOs and State DOTs.

Some people have asked me what I plan to do, so I have included photos from a few quilts I
have made. I plan to have a lot more time to sew, and also want to teach teenagers how to
sew, in an after-school program.

See you at TRB annual meeting in January!

Elaine Murakami
FHWA Office of Planning
206-220-4460

I will be retiring on Sept 30, 2015
Home email  ermurakami@gmail.com<mailto:ermurakami@gmail.com>