Project Meeting 2016.08.18 - bellevuewa/BKRCast GitHub Wiki

Employment Data

  • Washington State employment department will not grant consultants access to the ES202 (QCEW) data that was used to develop SoundCast
  • This is uncommon since just about every travel model in the country uses this data
  • Often a confidentiality agreement must first be signed
  • This is an issue since it means we cannot run the model and do calibration/validation
  • BKR and PSRC are going to talk with the employment department to see if this can change
  • RSG to provide examples of confidentiality agreements from other states
  • RSG to use a fake data set for the time being

PSRC Cooperation

  • PSRC plans to revise the supplemental models to operate at the parcel level this Fall so they can more easily work with the new BKR model
  • PSRC plans to complete limited model re-estimation in October and calibration/validation February.
  • PSRC will give us an interim release in November/December so we can start our calibration/validation exercise with the latest and greatest
  • PSRC will help validate the bike route choice model this Fall; BKR to build bike count database and attach it to the network
  • SoundCast model run summaries scripts already on GitHub

Model Design

  • We will use BKR’s new zones for auto and transit skimming and assignment
  • We will use parcels as the key spatial unit for Daysim
  • We will OpenStreetMap and likely either EMME or pandanas for short distance shortest path calculations
  • We want to use EMME bike network skims as much as possible since they include generalized cost (and not just distance for the allstreets procedures)
  • PSRC not doing toll/non-toll but VOT classes instead so BKR will just do this as well
  • New car sharing mode will focus on Uber/Lift/Taxi and not so much on AV; so HOV skims
  • Can we allow for intra-parcel trips? This is important for mixed use on big parcels – UW, Microsoft, etc.
  • 2014 will be the model base year

Land Use Data Development Process

  • We agreed that BKR will interface with the model at the zone level
  • There will be a tool that disaggregates zonal level data – hhs, employment, etc. – to the parcel level
  • Need to describe / account for splitting of zones
  • The tool doesn’t do forecasting; just format conversion
  • PSRC to think about how best to assist BKR and others with this in the future

Randomness Testing

  • Will merge the various randomness tests and come up with a systemic plan for ~ 10 tests or so
  • Spatial population sampling plan will likely look something like: BKR 500%, Seattle 25%, remaining PSRC 10%
  • Random seeding is synchronized across runs by resident/tour/trip/model combination so this helps with stability
  • Will review Bellevue square and Microsoft as well since they are large trip generators; and also during calibration/validation

Next Steps

  • RSG work on a full model run with the new BKR zones and network and quick-and-dirty revised model inputs
  • RSG finalize model design and randomness testing plan in the form of a technical memo
  • PSRC share full model setup, including inputs (with random employment)
  • Everyone work on the employment issue