1. 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 ITRE @ NCSU May 19, 2009

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. Highway Tools Project Tools Scenario Tools

8.  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…

9. 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

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

11. Warning Message Examples

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

13. Contact Info  Bing Mei: bmei@ncsu.edu

14. Thanks!