Greetings to the CTPP world!
I just want to take this opportunity on this beautiful Monday morning to
remind you that there's just over three weeks left to submit your
abstracts to present at the 13th TRB National Transportation Planning
Applications Conference next May. See the attached call for abstracts
or visit the conference website at www.trb-appcon.org for the glorious
details.
Don't be shy - we promise not to fall asleep reading your abstracts -
believe it or not, this is our idea of a good time! So, polish up your
favorite project and tell us what's different about it and why it's
interesting to you.
It bears repeating - the success of the conference depends on planners
and engineers like you. I hope to see you and your presentation in Reno
in 2011!
Best,
Vince
Vince Bernardin, Jr., Ph.D.
Chief of Transportation Modeling
Bernardin, Lochmueller & Associates, Inc.
6200 Vogel Road
Evansville, IN 47715
812.479.6200
-----Original Message-----
From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net
[mailto:ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Bernardin, Jr.,
Vincent
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 9:08 AM
To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net
Subject: [CTPP] Invitation and Call for Abstracts - 2011 TRB
PlanningApplications Conference
Greetings to all CTPP-lovers out there!
On behalf of TRB's Planning Applications Committee (ADB50) I would like
to announce the 13th TRB National Transportation Planning Applications
Conference and invite you all to seriously consider submitting an
abstract for a presentation.
I apologize for cross-posting if you have already received this through
another source, but we want to extend a broad invitation to all
transportation planners, and I thought CTPP users should be prime
candidates for some good presentations.
The conference will be held next spring in beautiful Reno, Nevada, "The
Biggest Little City in the World," from May 8-12 of 2011. The
conference website (www.trb-appcon.org) is now up and will be updated as
more details become available.
The focus of the whole conference is on planning applications - on
planning practice rather than pure theory - so cutting-edge research is
not required (although it's welcome, too). If you have a favorite or
interesting project that you like to bore your spouse and children with
- we're the folks who really want to hear about it! The conference is
intended to be a chance for transportation planners (and modelers,
engineers, etc.) from around the country and abroad to get together and
learn from each other by sharing their experiences - so please consider
joining us to share yours!
The call for abstracts is attached. Abstracts for presentations in 16
topic areas have been specifically solicited but abstracts on any
transportation planning topic are welcome. All abstracts are due by
September 15, 2010. The abstracts are limited to 350 words and can be
submitted online at the conference website (www.trb-appcon.org). Please
feel free to contact me with any questions.
The success of the conference depends on planners and engineers like
you. I hope to see you and your presentation in Reno in 2011!
Best,
Vince
Vince Bernardin, Jr., Ph.D.
Chief of Transportation Modeling
Bernardin, Lochmueller & Associates, Inc.
6200 Vogel Road
Evansville, IN 47715
812.479.6200
HI Everyone -
Ed Christopher and I were invited speakers at last week's Joint
Statistical Meetings, the statisticians' equivalent to TRB.
For those of you interested in survey methodology, it was fun to talk to
people who deal with the same kinds of issues that we have: cell
phones, paper diaries, non-response bias. We could learn a lot,
especially on implementing and analyzing longitudinal surveys that are
often used in health studies, so I would recommend attending JSM once in
a while especially if travel survey methods is your field. (Note:
Promod Chandok from BTS chairs a "transportation statistics" group that
he is trying to formalize).
1. The term "worker flow" has a different meaning to labor
economists than it does to us. They use this term to measure worker
entrances and exits from employers. (Session 471)
2. Administrative records. There is a LOT of discussion about
using administrative records to replace or augment traditional household
or housing unit surveys. This topic was discussed in both of the
sessions on Census 2020 (Sessions 389 and 563).
a. But, this means that a lot more research would need to be
completed about StARS (Statistical Administrative Records System). StARS
is a compilation of federal administrative records, mostly IRS and
Social Security, Medicare, Selective Service.
b. John Czajka (Session 331) compared income data from Current
Population Survey (CPS) to ACS and overall the numbers look OK, but when
you start to break down by income classes (high vs. low) or types of
income (wages vs. assets) then comparisons start to break down. One
point he made was that ACS counts college students where they are living
at the time of the survey, and CPS counts them at their parent's home.
(I think that the StARS would also most likely count college students at
their parent's home, because students are not likely to change their
address for reporting to SS or IRS).
c. WHERE the use of administrative records would occur in the
decennial census process is a big question - would it be used as a
follow-up, or would it be used at the front end, with surveys used as a
follow-up? The CB said that they could not rely on the USPS to be in
existence for the Census2020.
3. CB is talking about using the internet to collect responses in
a large (not test) way for Census 2020.
4. Using satellite image processing in the "visionary" session
(#389) on Census 2020. Joe Salvo, NYC, raised this topic . Maybe the
CB has an EARP (Exploratory Advanced Research Program) like USDOT has,
and could work with NASA and DoD to do some testing, maybe for the 2030
Census.
5. Several people (CB and non-CB) said that the per unit cost of a
completed decennial census survey is too high and the CB needs to hold
to no higher than the cost of 2010 per unit (current estimate for Census
2010 cost is $108/household). I think CB had a slide that said it was
60% higher per hhld cost than Census 2000.
6. The CB plans to issue a Fed Reg notice about the 5-year ACS
tabulations in August (this month). The 5-year (2005-2009) ACS
tabulations are planned to be released around December 2010. Census
2000 tracts and block groups boundaries are used (not the Census 2010
geography). These ACS tabulations will not have the benefit of the
Census 2010 results to be used for sample weighting.
Debbie Griffin (Session 511) said tables are NOT restricted based on
population thresholds or reliability. They WILL restrict based on
disclosure risk. They did not define what criteria were used to
identify the disclosure risk, but Laura Z (Session 158) said that 100
cells per table was a threshold that would result in suppression, and
also that GQ data will use partial synthesis to protect confidentiality.
The BLOCK GROUP data from the 5-year ACS (2005-2009) will NOT be
available from American Fact Finder, and may not be available in the
usual "data download" area, and may be restricted to Summary File
download and also Data Ferrett. Ken Hodges of Nielsen said he did not
understand why the CB was applying different data access rules to BG
data, when by his estimation, there were many more towns that are
smaller than the average BG, and these data access limitations were not
being applied to them. The Census Bureau says that BG data should ONLY
be used when used to build up larger geographic areas, because the
Margins of Error (MOEs) are too large otherwise.
We, the transportation community, should be ready to do some small area
(tract) analysis when these data are released and then make
recommendations as to whether or not to use these 5-year small area
tabulations. We know that sub-county estimates, e.g. place and PUMA
estimates, have been problematic in some areas.
7. The CB is working on web-based tutorials to help data users
understand ACS and multiple years of data accumulation and reporting.
These materials are going through 508-compliance review. The CB hopes
that they will have materials available in September.
8. Freddie Navarro reported several factors on why the ACS is less
reliable than the Census 2000 long form, including:
a. The mail-back + CATI "cooperation rate" was estimated to be
about 78% (when the ACS was in test period), based on Census 2000, but
this has been closer to 50%.
b. The lack of tract-level controls (pop totals by age/sex/race)
has resulted in an increase of 15-25% in the standard errors.
c. In summary, the most current results show that the Coefficient
of variation (C.V.) is 75% higher than the C.V. from the Census 2000 LF.
The original estimate was that the ACS C.V. would be about 33% higher.
This is consistent with our estimates that the sample size is about 50%
the size of Census 2000 LF after 5 years of data accumulation.
9. Ramesh Dandekar from EIA presented a paper on why rounded
values don't really protect confidentiality, and that by using Linear
Programming, having the independently rounded table marginals and the
rounded cell values, that he could guess many of the cell values
exactly, and many of the other cells by 1. I think that because so many
of the other cells were off by 1 or 2, that it would still meet the DRB
protection of individual confidentiality. However, conceptually, his
approach could be extended to use linear programming to solve for values
across multiple tables, e.g. Table A: MOT by income combined with Table
B: MOT by vehicles available, and then the numbers of cells with an
exact match would likely increase. He used the CTPP2000 tables with
rounded values as the example and did not have "real" data, but created
an example of an unrounded table. Of course, he used a small table as
the example, and how much computing power you would need to implement
this on a real CTPP tabulation is not clear, but since computing power
is cheap, I think it could be done if someone really wanted to try.
The approach being taken by NCHRP 08-79 (please see the synopsis of this
project in the August 2010 CTPP Status Report
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ctpp/sr1008.htm ) will avoid the use of rounding
for disclosure protection.
So, I hope that I haven't made any big errors, but if you find errors in
my email, please let me know so that I can correct them!
Elaine Murakami
FHWA Office of Planning (Wash DC)
206-220-4460 (in Seattle)
Most of you are aware that FHWA and AASHTO have released county-to-county
and place-to-place work flow data in Cambridge Systematics FTP site a
couple of days ago and some of you have either called me or sent me an
email asking questions on these data files. I compiled typical questions
and answers in the attached word file. Hopefully you will find this
helpful.
Liang Long
Cambridge Systematics, Inc.
4800 Hampden Lane
Suite 800
Bethesda, MD 20814
tel 301 347 9141
fax 301 347 0101
FHWA 202-366-6971
e-mail llong(a)camsys.comwww.camsys.com
CTPP2006-2008 Place-to-Place flows using ACS are also available for downloading now! We have NOT included the CTPP2000 because of difficulties in matching FIPS codes for Places between 2000 and the current CTPP. Two data formats are available: SAS and CVS. A detailed note for dataset is also available.
Check it out now!
ftp://ftp.camsys.com/temp/outgoing/CTPP/New%20CTPP%20ACS/Place%20Level/
Liang Long
Federal Highway Administration
Room 74-440
1200 New Jersey, SE
Washington, DC 20590
tel 202 366 6971
fax 202 493 2198
e-mail liang.long(a)dot.gov <mailto:liang.long(a)dot.gov>
Note from Elaine:
As you know, FHWA and AASHTO received the 2006-2008 CTPP files from the
Census Bureau at the end of July. FHWA made one key table available and
posted it on the Cambridge Systematics web page, originally on July 30,
with a corrected version on August 2 (duplicate records were removed).
ftp://ftp.camsys.com/temp/outgoing/CTPP/New%20CTPP%20ACS/
<ftp://ftp.camsys.com/temp/outgoing/CTPP/New%20CTPP%20ACS/>
We are now working on making a Place-to-Place file (limited to the
2006-2008 CTPP) and should have it checked and available by early next
week. As I might have mentioned before, this is a good example of
"swiss cheese" since Places that fall below the 20,000 residence
population threshold are missing, and unincorporated areas of counties
are also missing (since they are not a "place.")
Note from Caliper:
For your convenience, Caliper Corporation has processed these data into
two matrices, and one for the CTPP ACS 2006-2008 data (30MB) and one for
the CTPP 2000 data (24MB). We have also provided the data in the form of
ESRI personal and file geodatabases for ArcGIS users in your
organization. All of these files can be downloaded from the Caliper User
Center. If you are not a TransCAD User, you may register as a guest to
obtain the data at http://usercenter.caliper.com
<http://usercenter.caliper.com/> . We expect to make the full set of
CTPP 2006-2008 tabulations available after they are released in
September of this year.
Apologies for using this forum but I figured this might be appropriate. I am
trying to get the upper and lower bound at the 90% CI around shares of
people who live and work in Palm Beach County and who live in PB County but
work outside PB county. I am using 1 year ACS data from 2008 and am using
table B08007. I am getting a negative number under the square root term and
obviously it cannot calculate SE. Anyone has pointers for a workaround or
what you did when faced with something like this? I doubt if it can deal
with imaginary numbers and i suppose you can make it zero but if anybody can
elaborate on this it that would be helpful. I am attaching the actual XLS
file and you can see a screenshot of the file here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/krisviswanathan/ACS_STANDARD_ERROR
TIA,
Krishnan
Probably tomorrow.
-----Original Message-----
From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Supin.Yoder(a)dot.gov
Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2010 12:15 PM
To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net
Subject: RE: [CTPP] CTPP2006-2008 County-toCounty work flows are OUT!
Howard, this is great! When will the matrices be available? This will save me some effort to import to TransCAD.
*************************************************
Supin L. Yoder
Travel Demand Forecasting and GIS Specialist
Office of Planning
Federal Highway Administration
Phone: 708-283-3554
From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Howard Slavin
Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2010 3:50 PM
To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net
Subject: RE: [CTPP] CTPP2006-2008 County-toCounty work flows are OUT!
Tom,
Caliper will be providing a free download of the data in the form of TransCAD matrices and ESRI geodatabases which should be more convenient for many people.
Howard
Howard Slavin, Ph.D.
President
Caliper Corporation
-----Original Message-----
From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Tom Mank
Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2010 2:20 PM
To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net
Subject: Re: [CTPP] CTPP2006-2008 County-toCounty work flows are OUT!
Liang -
I tried downloading by clicking on the MeansofTransportation_v2.csv
link (3 times) and I get a error message that says 'file not loaded completely'
When I look at the file it has processed as far as Michigan ...
Tom
Tom Mank
Ithaca-Tompkins County Transportation Council
607-274-5583
>>> Liang Long <LLong(a)camsys.com> 7/30/2010 4:58 PM >>>
Hi,
We are pound to announce that CTPP2006-2008 County-toCounty flows using ACS are available for downloading now! The data file also contains CTPP2000 County-to-county flow for users convenience. Two data formats are available: SAS and CVS. A detailed note for dataset is also available.
Check it out now!
ftp://ftp.camsys.com/temp/outgoing/CTPP/New%20CTPP%20ACS/
Liang Long
Cambridge Systematics, Inc.
4800 Hampden Lane
Suite 800
Bethesda, MD 20814
tel 301 347 9141
fax 301 347 0101
FHWA 202-366-6971
e-mail llong(a)camsys.comwww.camsys.com
Tom,
Caliper will be providing a free download of the data in the form of TransCAD matrices and ESRI geodatabases which should be more convenient for many people.
Howard
Howard Slavin, Ph.D.
President
Caliper Corporation
-----Original Message-----
From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Tom Mank
Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2010 2:20 PM
To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net
Subject: Re: [CTPP] CTPP2006-2008 County-toCounty work flows are OUT!
Liang -
I tried downloading by clicking on the MeansofTransportation_v2.csv
link (3 times) and I get a error message that says 'file not loaded completely'
When I look at the file it has processed as far as Michigan ...
Tom
Tom Mank
Ithaca-Tompkins County Transportation Council
607-274-5583
>>> Liang Long <LLong(a)camsys.com> 7/30/2010 4:58 PM >>>
Hi,
We are pound to announce that CTPP2006-2008 County-toCounty flows using ACS are available for downloading now! The data file also contains CTPP2000 County-to-county flow for users convenience. Two data formats are available: SAS and CVS. A detailed note for dataset is also available.
Check it out now!
ftp://ftp.camsys.com/temp/outgoing/CTPP/New%20CTPP%20ACS/
Liang Long
Cambridge Systematics, Inc.
4800 Hampden Lane
Suite 800
Bethesda, MD 20814
tel 301 347 9141
fax 301 347 0101
FHWA 202-366-6971
e-mail llong(a)camsys.comwww.camsys.com
Hi All,
An Update.
The 2006 - 2008 ACS data have been released by the US Census Bureau (CB)
and the CTPP Special Tabulation has been developed and delivered. (for
the table list see: http://ctpp.transportation.org/Pages/ACSData.aspx)
This data set is the one we (the CTPP Program) are using to develop the
first CTPP product based on three year ACS Data.
In the next few months, I will try to keep this community apprised of
our progress on developing and releasing the data access software for
the CTPP based on three year ACS special tabulation that we purchased
from CB.
We issued an RFP in June of 2009 with proposals due late July. The
contract was ultimate awarded to the Beyond 20/20 Citygate team. Work
commenced on software development in January 2010.
The preliminary software has gone through one round of alpha testing,
with beta originally scheduled to be the next round. It was decided
after alpha testing that another intermediate round of user testing
should occur when the software had greater functionality, but was still
in a flexible, malleable state.
The project is nearly ready for the next round of user testing,
identified as "alpha-prime". The purpose of this round of testing is to
highlight the changes so far and to elicit feedback from users.
Beyond 20/20 has received and started processing the data from ACS.
This data was due to be delivered by 30-Jun, but the final tables were
not received until 28-Jul. Sample data was provided by mid-June, so
Beyond 20/20 has been able to use this to continue development of the
data processing logic and for testing. The data in the first set of
delivered tables will be part of the alpha-prime testing.
Work on the additional features and customization is nearly complete,
with all functionality in the alpha-prime testing, except the export to
shape files (currently under development) and the thematic mapping.
Work on the Session Editor, the customization that will allow users to
select geographies from a map, is still in progress. It is essentially
functionally complete, but there are still many issues to be resolved.
A significant outstanding issue is how the Part 3 data will be
represented both in the Session Editor and in the tables themselves.
Based on input from CTPP, it appears that there will need to be data
available for Part 3 in which the flows are represented in two
dimensions (residence and workplace), but it may also be necessary to
have a version with a single dimension for those users who do not need
to have them split. The alpha-prime will demonstrate both approaches
and the final decision on how to represent the data will be made based
on feedback from this testing.
The next contracted milestone is delivery of the beta release of the
package. There has been a request by CTPP for a new piece of
functionality to be added to the solution: export to Geodatabase
format. This format contains similar information to SHP files, but is
stored in a more up-to-date format in a Microsoft Access database.
Beyond 20/20 and Citygate are working on a proposal that will identify
the additional cost/time required to add this.
I will send another update in a few weeks, if you have any questions, do
not hesitate to contact me on or off list.
Penelope Weinberger
CTPP Program Manager
AASHTO
202-624-3556
http://ctpp.transportation.org/Pages/default.aspx
<http://ctpp.transportation.org/Pages/default.aspx>
<http://www.transportation.org>
It's just as bad to not make a plan as to blindly follow the one you
already have.