"GIS FOR TRANSPORTATION"

Moderator - Elizabeth Harper, formerly of Massachusetts Highway Department

Overview of Meeting - Presented by Elizabeth Harper, formerly of MassHighways

• Introduction to GIS-Transportation (GIS-T)
• Overview of Regional Activities
• Special Presentations
• GIS-T Applications - Moakley Center
• Welfare to Work - Volpe Center
• Safety and Positive Train Control - Volpe Center

Introduction to GIS-T

• routing
• allocation
• navigation
• travel modeling
• spatial analysis
• mapping

Routing

• What route does a delivery truck take to minimize distance and optimize deliveries?
• What is the best route from A to B without crossing substandard bridges?

Allocation

• Which children should be picked up by which buses ti minimize travel time for children?
• Which streets should be allocated to a maintenance crew for snow removal to optimize equipment usage?

Navigation

• Show me where I am and how I get to where I'm going in real time

Travel Modeling

• Show me where the locations are that people will want to travel to and from
• How many vehicles will be on the roads during the A.M. rush hour?
• What is the service area for a given transit station?
• How many residents are served by a given bus route?

Spatial Analysis

• Where are the high accident locations?
• Where is pavement condition poor and traffic volume high?

Mapping

• Where am I?
• Where is everything else?
• What does the world look like?

Overview of Regional Activities

• Massport
• MBTA
• MassHighways
• CTPS
• City of Boston Public Works
• Regional Planning Agencies
• Other Towns

Massport

• System
• Using SPSS, Excel and ArcView
• Presentation, Mapping and Data Analysis
• Studies and Plans
• Ground Access Planning
• Passenger Surveys
• Logan Express Planning
• Market Studies of Logan Express Ridership
• Airport Employee Commute Planning
• GIS Products
• 1993/1996 average daily ground access trips by town of origin
• Logan passenger trips from downtown Boston
• H.O.V. ground access distribution
• Woburn, Framingham, Braintree Logan Express passenger distribution
• Logan Express existing service areas
• Logan Express proposed service market areas
• State Transportation Building employee trip origins
• Logan employee potential ridematching corriders
• Major commuter rail market area to South Station
• Logan Airport - proposed ground access services
• East Boston shuttle route and schedule

MBTA

• Real Estate
• to locate property
• Operations Control Center Project
• Mapping routes using TransCAD
• Scheduling Software
• Will contain GIS component as front end to scheduling package (GIRO software)
• Customer Service Center
• Currently have an electronic map with coordinates and landmarks
• Used for trip planning
• Planning to Update and replace

MassHighways

• Base Map Updates and Products
• Roadway Inventory (attribute data)
• Working with towns and RPAs to update line work
• Catalog of GIS and Mapping Products
• Database Enhancement
• Added rest areas
• Adding interchanges and ramps
• Future Plans
• Plans to enhance rail network
• Considering conflation of roadway centerlines to the TIGER files to add address ranges
• Planning to conflate to 1:5,000 scale centerlines obtained from MassGIS Digital Orthophotography Project (adding MassHighway attributes to 1:5000 linework)

CTPS

• Congestion Management Study
• Travel Demand Model Development
• Developing networks and zone structures
• GPS - GIS Integration
• A tool for data collection of speeds and congestion
• Accident Analysis
• Transit Service Analysis
• Analyzing corriders of Service
• Corrider Planning Studies
• Analyzing a variety of databases within corriders

City of Boston - Public Works

• Pavement Management System
• Attributes
• Inventory of roadway conditions indexed by roadway inventory number
• Contains pavement condition and deterioration estimates
• Features
• Inputting geometrics from original layout plans (precision to 10,000th of a foot!)
• Generating centerlines with inventory number as key
• Most of the input is done for:
• East Boston
• West Roxbury
• Dorchester
• Using Microstation 95 on an NT Platform - Plans to buy Geomedia

Regional Planning Associations

• Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District
• Using TransCAD for travel modeling, displaying assignment results
• Cape Cod Commission
• Travel demand forecasting and PC-ARC/INFO

Other Towns

• Worcester
• School bus routing (ARC/INFO application with database under development)
• Newton
• Allocation of children to bus stops and buses (ARC/INFO application)

Presentation by Larry Harman - National Transit Fellow, Moakley Center for Technological Applications at Bridgewater State College

"Applications of GIS for Small Urban and Rural Transit"

Federal Transportation Authority Bus Route GIS Database Development

• 530 Fixed Route Systems "built"

• TIGER
• 6000+ routes selected
• Converted 530 systems to TransCad Windows
• built GIS network
• create route systems
• FTA Fixed Route Bus GIS Database ahead of software market
• BSC completed Bus Routes GIS Database
• Route-based Database (linked to GIS)
• Level of Service (LOS)
• Performance measures
• Service Area GIS Database
• Cities and towns in TA jurisdiction
• Fixed Route Wheelchair Accessibility Study (for wheelchair accessible buses)
• Y or N
• Use Excel database (Y or N) linking to GIS
• Study (and mapping) done of Regional Transit Authorities
• FTA Transit GIS Database: http://geolab.moakley.bridgew.edu (includes an FTP site and maps)
• Local Applications of FTA GIS
• Community Bus/Service Route Design
• i.e. study of CCRTA number of boardings per bus stop
• Paratransit origins by family income
• Origin - destination links by ZIP Code
• Compare paratransit vs. Fixed Route Service -> where are each, in relation to each other
• Point deviation bus stops
• Goal -- look at different patterns with GIS for transportation planning, which allows people to "see" results of studies and to see where $3.5B goes for transportation planning.

Contact Information:
Larry Harman lharman@bridgew.edu
Moakley Center GeoGraphics Lab webste: http://geolab.moakley.bridgew.edu/

GeoGraphics Lab
Moakley Center for Technological Applications
Bridgewater State College
Bridgewater, MA 02325 

Presentation by Jackson Royal - Manager of GIS Group, Volpe Center, Cambridge, MA

"Welfare to Work"

• Located Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Recipients in Boston Urban Area based on address matching
• Looked at concentration by ZIP Code
• Looked at proximity of TANF Recipients to transit
• most within one-quarter to one-half mile of mass transit.
• Looked at entry-level employment growth by town and high-growth towns and transit
• Looked at 3200 potential employees in high-growth towns and their proximity to transit
• 43% of employees are within one-half mile of transit
• Looked at travel time to existing jobs from central Boston
• only 33% of entry-level jobs in high growth areas can be reached within 2 hours by transit
• just over half of the employees in high-growth areas can be reached by transit from central Boston in under two hours
• Example: bus trip from central Boston to Waltham requires 2 transfers (3 buses) and takes one hour and 40 minutes, followed by a half-mile walk (no shuttle bus available).
• maybe several companies could get together for shuttle service
• day care issues also must be addressed
• must consider different shifts and schedules -- temporal components are very important

Contact Information:
Volpe Center website: http://www.volpe.dot.gov/

Volpe National Transportation Systems Center
55 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02142 

Phone:(617) 494-2224 

Presentation by Sherry Borener, PhD - Volpe Center, Regulatory Standards Studies, Cambridge, MA

"Corrider Risk Assessment Model"

• Purpose -- to assign a relative safety risk to any rail corridor with and without the use of advanced train control systems
• high speed/high density hazards for freight and passenger lines
• Used 1:100k GIS rail data
• Applicability of CRAM
• Railroad Radio Communication Study
• Other applications
• Risk Assesment Models
• ID accidents
• assign accident to links on rail network
• categorize and rate links with respect to risk
• GIS: attributes
• rail attributes (signalling, tracks' ownership and grade)
• flow attributes - annual volume, Hazmat volume
• accident experience - location
• Created map of Expected Accidents Per Mile as displayed on the FRA Rail Network
• Focus on:
• where is accident
• population exposure
• Hazmat volume
• what would consequences be for the people
• Currently the study is in draft mode; no final results yet.

Contact Information:
Volpe Center website: http://www.volpe.dot.gov/

Volpe National Transportation Systems Center
55 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02142 

Phone:(617) 494-2224

Last Updated 4/19/2000
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