Travel Model Improvement Program

Mission and Goals

The TMIP's mission is to support effective use of analytic methods and tools in transportation decision making. It has set the following three goals centering around transportation research, technical training, and technology transfer:

[Page 1595]
• 1.
  To develop and improve analytical methods in response to the increasing demands of planning and environmental decision-making processes mandated by the Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA) of 1990 and Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991, to better reflect today's lifestyles and travel behavior, and to provide information needed to answer questions confronting today's transportation policy makers
• 2.
  To help planning agencies build their institutional capacity to develop and deliver travel data and analyses
• 3.
  To support best practices in applying analytical tools to transportation planning decision making

The TMIP is organized into four activity tracks, which are improving current models for near-term use, developing entirely new models in the longer term, improving data collection for travel forecasting, and providing technical training and assistance to help transportation planners improve their models and skills.

Program Guidance and Community

Program guidance is provided by a peer-review panel comprised of experts from the principal audiences of program results. That panel identifies a broad agenda of research needs for the program.

In addition, the Peer Review Program provides an opportunity for planning agencies to invite an expert peer-review panel to review their data, methods, tools, and planning models to ensure that the technical processes they are applying meet the agencies' analysis needs. The TMIP supports peer reviews by assisting agencies in panel assembly, logistics, funding for travel, and, most important, documenting the peer-review meetings and preparing a final report that summarizes the review for the host agency.

Examples of the peer reviews conducted include the Sacramento Area Council of Governments transportation analysis simulation system (TRANSIMS) in November 2009, the Omaha–Council Bluffs Area Planning Agency in November 2010, the Detroit-TRANSIMS in March 2010, the mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission TRANSIMS in December 2010, the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments in April 2011, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Commission in April 2011, and the Chattanooga–Hamilton County RPC in May 2011.

The TMIP has made a number of technologies and services available to provide interactive learning and improve communication among transportation professionals. The TMIP community resources facilitate TMIP's outreach and capacity-building goals, foster creativity, encourage knowledge sharing, and further strengthen the state of practice in travel analysis methods. The primary resources that make up the TMIP community include TMIP-L E-mail List, Webinars, and Ask the Modeling Experts.

Accomplishments

Since its inception, the TMIP has supported research promoting development of the TRANSIMS, TELUS, UrbanSim, and MOVES software. It has also supported more than 30 peer reviews at state departments of transportation (DOTs) and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) around the country. It has provided technical training and hosted National Highway Institute (NHI) training courses, created and maintained a Web Knowledge and Information Exchange (WKIE), and sponsored research leading to hundreds of published reports.

...