1. Alternate Methodologies for Origin-Destination Data Collection
presented by
Robert G. Schiffer, AICP, Stantec Consulting Inc.
2017 TRB Transportation Planning Applications Conference
May 16, 2017

2. Presentation Overview
Background – Polk County TPO Phase I
Methods
Pros & Cons
Polk County TPO Implementation Phase II
Recent Stantec Studies using StreetLight Data
Acknowledgements

3. Background Polk County Transportation Planning Organization Task Order
Stantec experience with methodologies for Traffic & Revenue Studies
Author’s prior personal experience with alternate methodologies
Vendor contacts, demos, and examples, mostly circa Fall 2015
FHWA-HEP , completed by TTI in 2016

4. Methods
Tag Matching with High Speed Videotaping of License Plates – numerous data collectors
Aerial Tracking of Vehicles - Skycomp
Positioning of Bluetooth Readers to Match Devices – TrafficCast, DigiWest, etc.
WIFI Data Extraction – Acyclica
Tracking of Anonymous Cellular Data – AirSage
Truck GPS Tracking – ATRI
GPS Data Extraction – StreetLight Data

5. Pros & Cons
Tag Matching with High Speed Videotaping of License Plates (lots of firms can do this)
Pros: collection of tag data can lead to subsequent survey analysis (e.g., mailing out a postcard survey with DMV support)
Cons: Videotaping and matching of tags is potentially expensive and cumbersome

6. Pros & Cons (cont’d) Aerial Tracking of Vehicles (Skycomp)
Pros: Skycomp provides a permanent record and processes data into O/D matrices and images of distribution patterns minimizing post-processing
Cons: Cost of data collection and extraction can get expensive with multiple dates and time periods

7. Pros & Cons (cont’d)
Positioning of Bluetooth Readers to Match Devices (BlueToad, BlueMAC, etc.)
Pros: Bluetooth data collection allows flexibility of one time use vs. continuous data collection at sites for less cost than videotaping plates
Cons: Matching Bluetooth data collection is largely limited to enabled devices; unlike cellular flows, Bluetooth is limited to locations where readers are

8. Pros & Cons (cont’d) WIFI Data Extraction (Acyclica, DigiWest)
Pros: WIFI has a larger data collection range than Bluetooth and more frequently in the “on” position
Cons: WIFI doesn’t ping as frequently as Bluetooth and like Bluetooth, WIFI is limited to locations where readers are located
Acyclica RoadTrend
DigiWest BlueMAC

9. Pros & Cons (cont’d) Tracking of Anonymous Cellular Data (AirSage)
Pros: AirSage data is inexpensive; flexible pricing calculator to refine data budget; coverage is only limited by cellular provider market penetration
Cons: AirSage data only includes 2 national cellular carriers leading to potential bias; it is hard to distinguish vehicle type, travel mode, etc.

10. Pros & Cons (cont’d) Truck GPS Tracking (ATRI)
Pros: Cost of ATRI truck GPS data is inexpensive with willingness to meet tight budgets (non-profit entity)
Cons: ATRI GPS data are limited to a sample of trucks only; hard to determine corridor or area specific percent sample

11. Pros & Cons (cont’d) GPS Data Extraction (StreetLight Data)
Pros: StreetLight Data is powered by INRIX GPS data so metrics based on an unusually large sample size; data can distinguish between autos and trucks
Cons: Cost of data extraction is expensive for large no. of zones; StreetLight Data are not as precise as aerial photo tracing (precision issues can be problematic along roadways with extreme congestion, curvature, or dense street patterns)

12. Implementation Phase II
Obtained O/D data from AirSage on passenger travel flows
Obtained O/D data from American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) on truck travel flows
Analyzed datasets for completeness, accuracy, and usefulness
Documented findings

13. Implementation Phase II (Cont’d)
AirSage data $13,740 specs:
70 TAZs
1 month of data
Average weekday
Daily, AM & PM peaks
HBW, HBNW, NHB purposes
Residents vs. visitors
No demographic attributes or optional add-on reports

14. Implementation Phase II (Cont’d)
HBO
HBW
NHB
Total
ALL
1,545,828
409,185
1,909,012
3,864,025
Trips
40.00%
10.60%
49.40%
100%
Percent
Residents Only
1,309,000
368,716
1,122,820
2,800,537
46.74%
13.17%
40.09%
100.00%
Visitors Only
236,828
40,469
786,192
1,063,488
22.27%
3.81%
73.93%
AirSage data received:
Data dictionary of field names
Matrix of day part trips (9,311 records)
Matrix of weekday trips (11,353 records)
Data validation
CTPP worker flows
Regional model
Desire line maps
ACS Journey-to-Work Trips
CTPP
to Polk
from:
Estimate
Marg of Error
Hardee
746
198
Highlands
1,476
385
Hillsborough
11,135
833
Lake
1,058
327
Osceola
2,926
504
Pasco
1,443
293
Polk
184,244
2,734
Sumter
127 94
Total Work Flows to Polk
203,155
only from neighboring
Total Work Flows from Polk
209,898
only to neighboring
Total 2-Way
413,053

15. Implementation Phase II (Cont’d)
ATRI data $11,000 specs:
Truck trip table at aggregated zone level including exit stations trips enter/ exit Polk County
Map/shapefile depicting routes from truck GPS to derive trips within study area
Illustrations (maps) of freight generators and route use

16. Implementation Phase II (Cont’d)
ATRI data received:
Data dictionary of link attributes
truck GPS point data for 2 weeks from each of 4months in 2016
Matrix of 186,960 truck trips (70 x 70 matrix table
Data validation
Truck counts
Regional model
Desire line maps

17. Implementation Phase II (Cont’d)
Recent Stantec Studies using StreetLight Data:
Stantec has used StreetLight Data on several corridor projects, many related to traffic & revenue studies
StreetLight Insight allows querying data summaries from previously purchased datasets through specified deadline

18. Implementation Phase II (Cont’d)
Recent Stantec Studies using StreetLight Data:
Streetlight were kind enough to provide a comparable Polk County matrix of data for passive data research
Currently using StreetLight Data to validate travel demand in Evansville, IN-Henderson, KY for proposed bridge crossing

19. Acknowledgements Polk County TPO
Kimley Horn Associates (TPO on-call prime)
NCHRP 735
Acyclica
AirSage
All Traffic Data
ATRI
DigiWest (BlueMAC)
Skycomp
StreetLight Data
TrafficCast (BlueTOAD)
It is important also to acknowledge that the availability, cost, and limitations of passive data are continuously changing in response to new technologies and the competitiveness of vendors! “Location based service” is a high growth information industry sector

20. Questions?
“A location-based service (LBS) is a software-level service that uses location data to control features.
As such LBS is an information service and has a number of uses in social networking today as information,
in entertainment or security, which is accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network
and which uses information on the geographical position of the mobile device.” (Wikipedia)