Managing Networks A GIS & Project-Based Network Management System for Highways and Transit Presented to 12 th TRB Transportation Planning Applications Conference, Houston, TX Bing Mei, P.E. Triangle Regional Model Service Bureau NCSU May 19, 2009

Introduction  Initially developed in 2006 for creating and managing highway and transit networks for the Triangle Regional Model  Improved during the past couple of years  Extensively used in 2008 and 2009 for  2035 Long Range Transportation Plan studies 37 scenarios Total 800+ highway projects and phases coded 300+ ~ 600+ transit routes in each scenario  Regional Transit Vision Plan studies (multiple scenarios)  by Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO), Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro (DCHC) MPO, Triangle Transit (TT), NCDOT, and consultants

Goal  A highly interactive tool that improves network coding efficiency, especially for transit  If not handled properly, being interactive means being  user error prone  logic hole prone  challenged frequently by unthought-of situations  A highly interactive tool should  first of all, work & work correctly  be user-friendly and easy to use  be well balanced between flexibility and reliability  be well thought-out for all possible situations and hence robust  be able to capture, prevent, and/or handle user errors before they crash the system or cause problems later

System Structure  Two major components:  Highway network management  Project based  ONE universe highway network: base year network, plus ALL future year projects as a pool  A scenario network = base year network + projects selected from the pool  Transit network management  Specific scenario highway network based Why not ONE single universe highway network based? Does not exclude the use of the universe highway network as an option (turned out to be a great option for the Triangle Region)  Transit routes can be Created from scratch Revised from existing, or Borrowed from other scenarios  A whole transit route system can be easily recreated after the background highway network has been significantly altered

Highway Management  Two subcomponents:  Project Tool: creating and managing highway projects  projects are basic building blocks for creating a scenario highway network  definition of projects (e.g. extension of I-540 from I-40 to NC 55)  project data management: project ID project description project open to traffic time predecessor and successor projects road section attributes (e.g. #lanes, posted speed, median type, signal density, etc.) special case: road closure

Highway Management (2)  Scenario Tool: creating and managing highway scenario networks  A scenario network = base year network + selected projects  Selection of projects: From the universe project pool  manually one by one (or several by several)  by open to traffic time From project list table(s)  by reading a project list defined in an external spreadsheet file  by inheriting projects from other scenarios Use of the four approaches can be combined

Highway Tools Project Tools Scenario Tools

 The real challenging part! Why?  Highway project: one or multiple roadway sections are involved, but don’t have to be in sequence or even connected  Transit route: mostly multiple roadway sections are involved, and more importantly they must be connected to one another in sequence  Transit routes are usually represented as a series of highway sections in software packages  But the underlying highways change!  If a section is no longer part of a highway project, simply drop it and the project still has a valid representation in the software  Can we simply drop that section from a transit route? NO!  Furthermore, what about other changes: Transit Management Before After Split Merge Re-align More complicated…

Transit Management (2)  Two subcomponents:  One for creating transit routes and the route system  Create from scratch  Revise from existing, or  Borrow from other scenarios GIS functionality is critical Saves a huge amount of time than coding from scratch  One for re-creating route systems  When the underlying highway network has gone through significant editing  When borrowing a large number of transit routes from other transit route systems that already exist  When creating a subset of a transit route system with an altered highway network  GIS, GIS, and GIS!!  Hundreds of hours saved for CAMPO and DCHC LRTP modeling

Transit Tools Create Routes & Route System Re-create Route System

Warning Message Examples

Acknowledgement  Good suggestions from TRM Service Bureau colleagues:  Chao Wang  Joe Huegy  Leta Huntsinger (DCHC MPO currently)  Others

Contact Info  Bing Mei:

Thanks!