{"id":458,"date":"2019-01-23T18:01:18","date_gmt":"2019-01-23T18:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ajhassoc.com\/?p=458"},"modified":"2019-01-23T18:02:42","modified_gmt":"2019-01-23T18:02:42","slug":"reckless-travel-modeling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ajhassoc.com\/index.php\/2019\/01\/23\/reckless-travel-modeling\/","title":{"rendered":"Reckless Travel Modeling"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry\">\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I have never felt any fear of liability from faulty travel\nforecasts that I have performed or were performed with my software for public\nagencies.&nbsp; It is not that the methodology\nis perfect, it\u2019s that expectations are so low.&nbsp;\nThe errors inherent in travel forecasting are well documented, so buyers\nmust beware.&nbsp; While I try to do\neverything correctly, I know that any mistakes will not be apparent for years,\nmaybe decades, for long-range planning applications.&nbsp; There is little chance of doing more harm than\nmisspending public funds.&nbsp; And we know governments\nmisspend public funds all the time.&nbsp; Lawsuits\nover traditional travel forecasts are rare, and they most often involve\ndisputes over assumptions rather than the methodology itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Lately, travel models have been used as part of the\ninvestment process for toll highways.&nbsp;\nThe implications of a forecast failure are much higher, since real\npeople can be hurt financially if things go awry.&nbsp; I have never attempted to sell QRS II to people\ndoing toll-road studies, preferring to stay a very long distance away from irate\ninvestors.&nbsp; And inevitably there will be irate\ninvestors.&nbsp; I do not trust the power of\nthe end-user license agreement to protect me from misuse of my software.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Applications outside of traditional planning and benefits\nassessment worry me.&nbsp; I definitely had concerns\nabout the RADIUS model my students, colleagues and I built for WisDOT a few\nyears ago.&nbsp; This model was designed for\nwork zone construction traffic assessment.&nbsp;\nBriefly, the RADIUS model combined dynamic traffic assignment and synthetic\nOD table estimation for an area about the same size (but different shape) as SEWRPC\u2019s\nregional model.&nbsp; Work zone traffic\nengineers do immediate-term forecasts.&nbsp;\nIf the model fails, we know about it really fast.&nbsp; There is nowhere to hide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Models of incidents are less susceptible to critique because\nit is never possible to perfectly replicate the conditions of an incident\nbefore it happens.&nbsp; Nonetheless, a\nmethodology employed for good incident management planning should be quite\nsimilar to a methodology for work zone traffic planning.&nbsp; And that methodology differs in important\nways from traditional travel forecasting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First, the demand estimation steps of a travel forecasting\nmodel are far too crude for work-zone\/incident work.&nbsp; While an OD table from a travel forecasting\nmodel might be a good starting point, it would need considerable refinement\nwith ground data before it can give reliable traffic estimates.&nbsp; Second, the most obvious effects of work\nzones and incidents are long queues at freeway bottlenecks and at\nintersections.&nbsp; Static traffic assignment\nis inept at dealing with queuing.&nbsp; Volume-delay\nfunctions, such as the BPR curve, were never designed for situations where\nvolume-to-capacity ratios exceed 1.0 for long periods of time.&nbsp; Traffic microsimulation or dynamic traffic\nassignment is required when queue formation is likely.&nbsp; We should be highly suspicious of static\ntraffic assignment when applied to seriously congested conditions caused by\nwork-zone closures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Beyond the possibility of being identified as incompetent, there are tangible negative effects of a bad work-zone forecast.&nbsp; Detour routes may be chosen improperly.&nbsp; Message signs may be located in the wrong places.&nbsp; Signals both near and well away from the closure may retimed improperly or not retimed at all.&nbsp; Driver safety may be compromised.&nbsp; Multimodal options may be underutilized.&nbsp; And a whole lot of road users may be angry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So you can imagine my dismay when I hear of MPO models being\nused for work zone forecasting or when I read academic articles implying that\nstandard, long-range planning methods can conveniently be used for that same\npurpose.&nbsp; Such behavior and writing are\nboth reckless and dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Alan Horowitz, Whitefish\nBay, January 23, 2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have never felt any fear of liability from faulty travel forecasts that I have performed or were performed with my software for public agencies.&nbsp; It is not that the methodology is perfect, it\u2019s that expectations are so low.&nbsp; The errors inherent in travel forecasting are well documented, so buyers must beware.&nbsp; While I try &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,6,7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-planning-theory","category-project-level-forecasting","category-research-philosophy","category-travel-modeling","anons"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Reckless Travel Modeling - QRS II Page<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/ajhassoc.com\/index.php\/2019\/01\/23\/reckless-travel-modeling\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Reckless Travel Modeling - QRS II Page\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have never felt any fear of liability from faulty travel forecasts that I have performed or were performed with my software for public agencies.&nbsp; 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