Mike on Traffic

Jamar's TDC Ultra Video Mode

Nick Erpelding at SRF Consulting Group pointed out to me that Jamar Technologies is advertising on the back of the ITE Journal that you can upgrade the firmware on a TDC Ultra count board to count in Video Mode.  The ad claims you can toggle the speed faster/slower as well as pause a count.  

Sounds a lot like our fully integrated COUNTpad/PC-TAS system.  The faster/slower/pause buttons on the COUNTpad control the video speed and pausing of the video real time.  The TDC Ultra is not wired into the computer like our COUNTpad though.  It's my understanding you have to be pushing a faster/slower button on your keyboard at the same time you're pushing the faster/slower button on the TDC Ultra to make this work accurately.  This seems very awkward to me and I really can't envision doing a busy count where you're fingers are flying to do the count while also pushing a slowdown button simultaneously on the TDC Ultra and your computer keyboard.  

I used Jamar equipment for the first ten years of Traffic Data Inc's existence before I branched out with using the Pico Count 2500 tube counter and developing our own video system.  They used to lead the industry with their traffic counting gear and their stuff worked as advertised.  

Anyone out there using Jamar's Video Mode?  I'd love to do a user group where we compared the COUNTpad system versus the Jamar Video Mode system.

p.s.  Here's some clarification from Mike Overholt at Jamar.  And I'd still like to see a user group test each of our systems side by side.  

Under normal operations the TDC Ultra automatically keeps track of the time and stores the data at the end of the interval. In Video mode, the user has control over when to end the current interval and start the new one. There is no ticking clock on the Ultra so the user can go as slow or fast as they want in recording data and even take breaks if need be.  The key is that when they reach the end of a time interval (usually 15 minutes) they press a key combination on the Ultra and it immediately jumps to the next interval. So, all the user needs is a video that shows time, tell the video to play at the speed they want, then count with the Ultra.  A detailed explanation can be found at http://www.jamartech.com/TMBs-video.html.

 

 

 

Prezi - Engineers/Architects/Planners best Presentation Software

My friend Chris Chromy told me about a software package called Prezi.  It is basically a giant whiteboard where you put all of the information from your typical PowerPoint slides.  You can also throw on drawings, videos, reports, and any other items you think you might get asked about in a meeting.  It makes it amazingly easy to bounce between graphics and allows you to zoom/pan around so you can hone in right at the detail you need to talk about.  So if a neighbor asks a question about there house, you can zoom right into there house.

No more scrolling back 25 slides in your presentation to answer a question.  Check out a rough traffic study presentation I put together in about 30 minutes here.

Death of the 2-Hour Turning Movement Count

Just talked to a client of ours who asked for a quote to get a.m. and p.m. 2-hour turning movement counts at two intersections that are each controlled with stop signs (we do have a standard price list for our metro area - Download 2012 TDI Price List, but the project is about an hour and a half aways so we need to tack on extra travel charges).  Because we're counting with the COUNTkit video system now, we've changed our pricing structure quite a bit so it's not much more to collect counts from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. vs. just doing the traditional 2 hour morning/evening counts.

A 13-hour turning movement count from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. is so much more useful than 2 hour peak period counts - (1) you know you've captured the a.m. and p.m. peak hours and (2) you have data you can go back and do a traffic signal warrant analysis with (you can even choose to factor out some or all of your right turns in this analysis).

Let's expand our thinking to a 24 hour turning movement count - the above advantages plus you get daily traffic volumes on each leg of your intersection.

Or why not expand to a 48 hour turning movement count - the above advantages plus you can average your study periods to control for daily variation.

Or why not expand to a 120 hour turning movement count - the above advantages plus you can look at weekend data which may be crucial in a big shopping district or if you're near a large church.

So why are we still doing 2 hour turning movement counts?  It's a tradition that goes back to at least the first Highway Capacity Manual published in 1950.  When you're counting with people who are sitting at the corner, it gets very expensive to do turning movement counts for much more than a few hours.  Being practical engineers - our industry decided the cost/benefit means a few hours of data is typically good enough.  But its crazy to think we're making six or seven figure decisions based on one data point.

Now that we're in the 21st century - 2 hours isn't good enough anymore.  Shameless plug....

The turnkey COUNTkit system we've developed and sell at www.CountingCars.com changes our 60 year old cost/benefit calculation.  13 hour turning movement counts should be the minimum amount of data traffic engineers use for their analyses and 48 hour turning movement counts are justifiable.  Below is an 87 second video that explains the COUNTkit system and there's also a lot of information available at www.CountingCars.com.  And of course feel free to comment below or drop me an email at mspack@countingcars.com if you want to chat more about this.

 

Rethinking Level of Service

The current issue of the Institute of Transportation Engineers' Journal had an interesting article in it about the City of Pasadena, California moving towards a Multi-Modal Level of Service framework for making decisions.  Pasadena recognizes that a vibrant downtown with good transit, pedestrian, and bicycle mobility will have suboptimal vehicle mobility.  This was certainly my experience in Manhattan - vehicle traffic was quite congested, but there were a tremendous amount of people getting from A to B in a reasonable amount of time because of the subways and the bicycle/pedestrian systems. 

No one would argue Manhattan needs to tear down buildings to make bigger roads - in fact they're moving the other way by turning streets into pedestrian/bicycle malls and adding bike lanes onto streets that used to be dominated by vehicles.

The article spoke about Pasadena's framework of how they make decisions.  Fred Dock and Mike Bagheri from the City were kind enough to respond to an email from me and provide a couple of initial project specific studies where they've implemented Multi-modal Level of Service (MMLOS) standards to assess transportation conditions instead of just looking at the standard vehicle Level of Service. They're early in the process and I'm hoping to see more examples of how communities are implementing MMLOS to move away from an auto-dominated infrastructure system.

The 2010 Highway Capacity Manual has many chapters related towards MMLOS - this is the way our industry is heading, but it is a slow moving tanker that needs to be turned.  Anyone out there have good project specific Transportation Impact Studies that implement MMLOS?  I'd love to share examples - maybe we can get the slow moving tanker turning a little faster.

Traffic Signals 101

Here's a guest post from Max Moreland whose been working with me for about a year now.  Here is his take on the Traffic Signals 101 class he attended last week -

The course presented a broad view of traffic signals ranging in topics all the way from why they are installed to emergency vehicle preemption.  As an EIT working in the traffic engineering industry that has been out of school for about a year, I found this to be a useful course and would recommend it to those in a similar position to myself.

Since there was such a large range of topics presented in the course, there were plenty of things that I had already seen.  Some of these things were learned in school and other things I have picked up while working, but it was nice to see it all together in one course rather than in bits and pieces.

 Here are the top five things I learned at Traffic Signals 101:

1. Signal Agreements – Who pays for what?  Traffic signals are expensive, so it is important to know how cost, maintenance and operations are split up.
2. Signal Plans – If you are going to work with signals, you will need to know how to read a signal plan and a wiring diagram.  All those dots, lines and arrows are not just there to make everything look fancy and technical; they actually mean something!
3. Flashing Yellow Arrows – These are starting to pop up all over the place and learning their proper function is very useful.
4. Vehicle Detection – I remember talking about loop detectors in school, but I do not recall going into much detail on them.  Traffic Signals 101 gets into the different types of detection and detectors used in the field.
5. Emergency Vehicle Preemption (EVP) – The operation of EVP lights is more complex than I had previously thought.  There is more to it than just detecting an emergency vehicle in the area.

The course is only offered once a year, but you can check out the course workbook on MnDOT’s website. Here's a list of the topics covered:

1. Agreements
2. Field Components
3. Introduction to Plans
4. Cabinet
5. Controller Operations
6. Field Operations
7. Head/Loop Placement
8. Pedestrians
9. Advanced Warning
10. EVP and Railroads
11. Special Provisions
12. Maintenance

Demograghy and Traffic

I attended the NCITE luncheon yesterday where Tom Gillaspy (MN State Demographer) was the featured speaker.  It was very scary and informative.  The scary/informative part (true for both the United States and Minnesota) -

• The babyboom generation (began in 1946) is magically turning 65 (age when they can collect Medicare in addition to Social Security).  Huge wave of retirements coming.
• The current twenty-somethings (GenY) strongly prefer dense/urban living.
• The above factors are driving a resurgance of inner-city/first ring suburbs.
• GenX (me) is the smallest generation out there.  Retiring babyboomers plus small generation of forty-somethings means potentially huge shortage in leadership.

Scary slide (because it leads to Medicaid type services totally engulfing Federal and State spending on our current trajectory - this slide is for MN, but Tom says MN is very representative of U.S.):

What does this aging population/change in demographics mean for traffic engineers?

• Need to be better with signage (size, location, etc.).
• Need to design facilities keeping longer reaction times in mind.
• Peak hour traffic will plateau or decrease, but non-peak traffic will go up.
• Transit plays a much bigger role moving forward.

 

 

Streets.MN Launches

Happy to report Streets.mn has launched.  I'm a bystander on this one, but a lot of the Minnesota based transportation planning bloggers are taking part.  Including Nate Hood, who started working with me last fall. Here's the mission statement from the site -

"Streets.MN explores the pressing issues facing our cities, towns, neighborhoods and the places in between.  Our mission is to expand and enhance the conversation about transportation and land use through research and informed commentary.  Streets.MN was formed because we think transportation and land use news and information in Minnesota can be done better."

 

PC-Warrants - Forecasting Hourly Volumes for Signal Warrant Analysis

Back in March I wrote about forecasting hourly volumes for signal warrants from forecasted daily traffic volumes.  It's come to my attention that PC-Warrants has a tool built in it that makes the process very easy.  If you have PC-Warrants, search under "Volume Data Wizard - ADT to Volume Converter." 

The Volume Wizard lets you put in your own hourly percentages to convert the daily traffic volume to the hourly volumes.  The default percentages in PC-Warrants are  "Default values for typical urban approach, from Pignataro's 1973 textbook."  Here's a screenshot for the data entry window.

Training Data Collection Technicians

The Florida DOT has a training program to teach their technicians how to collect data, quality control check it, and enter the data into their database/GIS system.  They train about 60 folks a year.  After about three years of offering this training course, FDOT prepared a report that analyzed the effectiveness of this class.  I have to admit, this sounds a lot more intense than the on the job training I put my folks through.

The report goes through "competency modeling" to assess what these technicians should know and then lays out a plan to appropriately train them.  The whole process is fascinating and looks like it could be applied to any training curriculum. Traffic techs and their employers should scan through the report.

I applaud FDOT for taking a step back to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of what they do.  If I worked at a large agency or firm, I would want them to evaluate employee performance and training in a similar manner.

p.s.  Thanks Don Gettner for sending this over.

Traffic Forecasting - Past Performance Does Not Guarantee Future Results

I'm working on a traffic study where the reviewing agencies asked us to prepare 20 year forecasts in addition to looking at the build out year.  Typically, we look at data trendlines on nearby roads and throughout the county to determine a "typical growth rate" for traffic in the area.  This has historically been an annual growth rate of 1 to 3%.  This often leads us to factoring traffic up 50% or more over 20 years and then layering on the traffic from the proposed development.  Factoring existing traffic volumes up approximately 50% is also how traffic forecasts are often prepared for road design projects.

I'm strongly reconsidering this approach.  Consider Figure 1 below from the Federal Highway Administration's Office of Highway Policy Information website.  From 1986 to 2006, traffic on all of our highways did fit the model of growing by about 2 to 3% a year (or 50% to 60% over the 20 years).  But since 2005, we've had a significant drop in traffic and the trendline sure makes it look like traffic growth has plateaued. 

I've also been reading through the Texas Transportation Institute's 2011 Urban Mobility Report.  They talk about the terrible state of congestion.  I'm not going to argue that congestion doesn't suck, but take a look at Exhibit 1 from their report.  Compared to 1982, congestion is indeed terrible now compared to 30 years ago.  But looking at the 2000 to 2010 data shows congestion peaked in 2005 and we're not much worse off than we were a decade ago. 

Also consider the August 2011 to August 2010 data below from the Federal Highway Administration.  From their website, "Travel on all roads and streets changed by -1.7% (-4.6 Billion vehicle miles) for August 2011 compared with August 2010."   

But maybe Minnesota's different...... NOPE.  Below is Figure 1 from Mn/DOT's Vehicle Miles of Travel Trends in Minnesota:  1992-2010 showing traffic in Minnesota has followed the national trend in plateauing.

Based on national and local trends, my conclusion is that it is very reasonable to think traffic growth has plateaued.  The punchline for traffic impact studies: the "no-build" traffic forecasts should be the same as the existing traffic volumes.  We don't need to do opening day forecasts and 20 year forecasts because they can reasonably be expected to be similar. 

And given our huge budget shortfalls, this should also mean a policy of fixing the infrastructure we have.  NOT expanding our transportation system to add capacity.