National Academies Press: OpenBook

Standardized Procedures for Personal Travel Surveys (2008)

Chapter: Chapter 3 - Training Approaches and Priorities

« Previous: Chapter 2 - Summary of Recommended Standardized Procedures and Guidelines
Page 45
Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Training Approaches and Priorities." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. Standardized Procedures for Personal Travel Surveys. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13805.
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Page 45
Page 46
Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Training Approaches and Priorities." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. Standardized Procedures for Personal Travel Surveys. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13805.
×
Page 46
Page 47
Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Training Approaches and Priorities." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. Standardized Procedures for Personal Travel Surveys. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13805.
×
Page 47

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The most important element with respect to the implementation of the findings of this NCHRP project is that the survey public—consisting of MPOs, survey consultants, state DOTs, and other agencies involved in the commissioning and execution of surveys—should become knowledgeable of the recommended standardized procedures and that they should be accepted as a starting point for the improvement of survey quality in transportation surveys. 3.1 Workshops We suggest that there should be one or more workshops on the standardized procedures and guidelines. Ideally, one such workshop should take place in conjunction with the TRB Annual Meeting. It is also important that as many survey firms and consultants who use survey firms also be involved in the workshops. Another potential manner of holding the workshop would be to organize it as a stand-alone conference/workshop, to be held at an appropriate time and place. 3.2 Adoption by the Transportation and Development Institute of the ASCE The recently formed Transportation and Development Institute (TDI) of ASCE has appointed a standards committee in the area of transportation economics and planning. At present, it has not been completely clear for what standards this committee would become responsible. However, ini- tial discussions with committee chairs in the TDI have indicated some considerable interest that this committee might take a responsibility for promulgating standards and guidelines developed out of the standardized procedures of this document. Again, however, the main problem is one of funding, if the committee’s role is also seen as one of continually updating and promulgating stan- dards. ASCE is not in a position to provide significant funding to its committees for such activities. Like the TRB, it tends to rely heavily on volunteer efforts of the professionals associated with it. Therefore, it will again be necessary to consider how a source of funds might be made available to the committee. However, it would seem that a joint committee effort of the ASCE and TRB might provide an appropriate mechanism for promulgating standardized procedures of this type. Furthermore, the ASCE will bring an additional dimension, in terms of likely audiences for the standards. 3.3 National Highway Institute Course A regular training course should be developed from the materials in this report to form one of the National Highway Institute (NHI) courses. Development of the course would necessarily be at 45 C H A P T E R 3 Training Approaches and Priorities

the expense of the NHI, but these costs should be recovered through offering the course around the country. 3.4 Presentation of Results at Professional Conferences This has already been initiated by the authors of this research. Early elements of the research were used as the basis of a keynote paper to the 6th International Conference on Travel Survey Meth- ods at Berg-en-Dal, South Africa in August 2001. Similarly, one of the keynote papers at the 7th International Conference on Travel Survey Methods, Playa Herradura, Costa Rica, was based on the recommended standards and guidelines from this report. A paper was offered on the mate- rials from some sections of this report at the 10th International Conference on Travel Behaviour Research in Lucerne, Switzerland in July of 2003. In addition, presentations have been made at the 83rd Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board and at the mid-year meeting of the Planning Committees of TRB in Park City, UT in July 2004. Further presentations will be made at conferences, as opportunities permit. As a result of these various presentations, it appears that it is now fairly well known that this work exists and a number of professionals have indicated that they welcome the work and are looking forward to the opportunity to make use of it. We propose to continue this. 3.5 Demonstration Projects It is always useful to be able to demonstrate that better products are achieved by applying the procedures than by business as usual. Initially, demonstration projects will have only limited abil- ity to show benefits until there are sufficient demonstrations to compare with situations where the procedures have not been used so that the benefits are clearly identifiable. Such demonstrations could be handled as an add-on to future MPO surveys, by additional funding provided through the U.S.DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, together with FHWA, and other interested agen- cies. We understand that several large MPOs may be planning major household travel surveys in the next few years, and these would provide an opportunity to showcase the application of the stan- dards and guidelines. 3.6 Potential Funding for the Promulgation and Maintenance of the Standardized Procedures and Guidelines There appear to be two obvious potential sources of funding for the continuing promulgation and maintenance of these procedures. The first of these is AASHTO. As the agency that has funded the research in the first place, it would seem that it would certainly be appropriate to look for a continuing funding source to AASHTO in the first instance. The second of these is the U.S.DOT Bureau of Transport Statistics. This agency is clearly one that is positioned to be able to take on ongoing support of standards and guidelines for travel surveys and which, if it did so, would also add significantly to the standing of such standards and guidelines in the profession at large. It is also appropriate to consider what level of funding may be needed for the promulga- tion and maintenance of standards. There are probably a number of activities that need to be funded for this, which are listed here, along with our approximate assessment of what they might cost: 46 Standardized Procedures for Personal Travel Surveys

1. Maintenance of a website for the report material; 2. Sponsorship of appropriate workshops, short courses, or training courses, all of which would partially generate their own funding through fees and registrations; 3. Add-on funding for application of the standardized procedures to household travel surveys, which would be a variable amount, depending on what specific aspects would not have been done anyway; and 4. An ongoing research program to add to the standards and guidelines, and to update them. Training Approaches and Priorities 47

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TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 571: Standardized Procedures for Personal Travel Surveys explores the aspects of personal travel surveys that could be standardized with the goal of improving the quality, consistency, and accuracy of the resulting data. The technical appendix to NCHRP Report 571 was published as NCHRP Web-Only Document 93.

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