TRB AP090 Committee Meeting

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January 19, 2022 at 1PM EST

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Agenda

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Welcome and Minutes Approval

With a show of hands (digital), please approve the minutes from the 2021 Annual Meeting Presentation.

Minutes are in the form of an annotated slide deck and mentimeter polls from last time.

Slides have been posted to the website and were sent yesterday via email

We approved this format for minutes at our last meeting.

A few hands are still raised to disapprove minutes - those may be hands that stayed raised from approval - reach out to Carole Voulgaris (secretary) with concerns about the minutes.

Please drop your name and affiliation in the chat!

TRB & TCRP Update

TRB

• Brendon Hemily
• Steve Andrle

TCRP (slide)

• Mariela Garcia-Colberg
• Steven Parker

Brendon Hemily - Not a lot to report

Steve - Biggest news - survived the annual meeting! Strict COVID policy - about 9k registrants, ~5k active attendees. Half of transit chairs couldn’t attend, those who did said it went well.

This committee won’t be rotating, strategic realignment will be complete in April.

Looking closely at specialty conferences going forward.

Lots of interest in hybrid meetings - took place on the fly at the Annual Meeting to some degree - may not be possible to institutionalize - costs of live+virtual at a hotel may be prohibitive.

Mariela - TCRP - Thanks for contributions. 21 reports including Synthesis 153 - Transit Analysis Toolbox

Nominations for new projects due February 4.

(see next slide)

TCRP is seeking panel nominations for these newly selected research projects for the FY 2021 program. Those interested in serving on a project oversight panel should complete a nomination form by going to https://volunteer.mytrb.org/Panel/AvailableProjects by Friday, February 4, 2022.��A solicitation for FY 2023 problem statements will be issued in the near future—problem statements will be due on June 17, 2022 (package will be available on TRB website).� - The screening process will begin summer 2022� - TOPS Committee will select new FY 2023 projects in October 2022��Additionally a solicitation for FY 2022 synthesis topics has been issued. Topic suggestions are due by March 18, 2022. Information on how to submit a topic is available at https://www.trb.org/TCRP/TCRP.aspx.

TCRP FISCAL YEAR 2022 PROGRAM

TRB In-Person Update

Open forum, please raise your hand to speak

Planned workshop was cancelled.

Lectern session on Monday. Speakers on integrating equity data with transit data - equity analysis beyond Title VI, role of transit data in equity analysis.

Meet+Greet during committee session time. Chat about opportunities for research, networking, ideas to incorporate into TSP.

One suggestion: A Slack channel. Monthly email summaries of Slack channel, to address challenge of one more communication platform for folks to keep track of.

Currently looking for a new Communications Chair - reach out to committee leadership if interested.

Poster session - about 12 participants - a lot of representation from Illinois. A peak of about 55 people were there - lots of conversation and knowledge exchange.

Feel free to drop comments in chat - we’ll be saving those comments as well.

Mobility Data slack channel is now live - link in chat.

Feel free to send us other comments and especially pictures.

Chair’s Report - Research Related to New Bill �

Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA)�Now Known As �Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL)

Exploring Roles for Transit Data in New Bill�Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill (BIL)

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Sec 11130 PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

BUS CORRIDORS— the Secretary may approve payment for carrying out a capital project for the construction of a bus rapid transit corridor or dedicated bus lanes, including the construction or installation of—

• Traffic signaling and prioritization systems
• Redesigned intersections that are necessary for the establishment of a bus rapid transit corridor
• On-street stations
• Fare collection systems
• Information and wayfinding systems
• Depots
• Scan for transit data standards and methodologies for these needs

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Exploring Roles for Transit Data in New Bill�Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill (BIL)

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Sec 11406 HEALTHY STREETS PROGRAM

• Conducting an assessment of urban heat islands to identify hot spot areas of extreme heat or elevated air pollution
• Conducting an equity assessment by mapping tree canopy gaps, flood-prone locations, and urban heat island hot spots as compared to—
• Pedestrian walkways and public transportation stop locations
• Low-income communities
• Disadvantaged communities
• Using GTFS transit stops to analyze tree cover and pedestrian walking pathways to the stop
• Using GTFS to identify transit routes to cooling shelters

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Sec. 13004 – DATA INTEGRATION PILOT PROGRAM for weather conditions, roadway conditions, incidents, work zones, and information for emergency responders

• Real-time temperature observations located at transit stop appended to GTFS real-time data

Exploring Roles for Transit Data in New Bill�Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill (BIL)

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Sec. 13010 – TRANSPORTATION ACCESS PILOT PROGRAM

• MPOs to assess levels of access to jobs, medical facilities, childcare, educational facilities, housing, food stories, supply chain elements, as well as by population characteristics
• Using transit and integrated shared mobility options to access locations

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Sec. 11405 – PROMOTING RESILIENT OPERATIONS FOR TRANFORMATIVE, EFFICIENT, and COST-SAVING TRANSPORTATION (PROTECT) PROGRAM

• States and MPOs can plan for resiliency to address extreme weather and climate change impacts
• Using transit and integrated shared mobility options for evacuations

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Committee Leadership Report Out

• Michael - Vice Chair, Webinar Series
• Carole - Secretary
• Ray and Greg - CRC Updates
• Eric - Paper Review, Workshop
• Nat - Young Member Coordinator
• (vacant) - Committee Communications Coordinator (CCC)

Vice Chair: Goal to have webinar series - likely to be Fridays at noon (Eastern). Those interested in helping to organize - it will be informal (not necessarily with everything publicly shared). Reach out to Michael (or comment in chat) if you’re interested in helping to organize this - won’t happen without volunteers, but light lift if shared among volunteers.

Secretary: moving forward with new minutes process, taking notes, keeping organized, providing access to membership and friends.

CRC Updates: Last year submitted 2 syntheses, neither selected, but we’ll be trying for some new ones this year - looking for volunteers to help look through and add to research needs statements. There will be a weekly meeting focused on research - let us know if you’re interested in participating. Greg is also chair of the transit survey subcommittee - possibility of making that a joint subcommittee

2 topics submitted last year - one was about data literacy, synthesis of agencies’ ability to process and use data. There was a data literacy workshop by state DOTs at TRB this year - demonstrates the interest/importance of this topic.

Transit data workshop: Planned workshop cancelled due to inability of leadership to travel (COVID) - purpose was to help people work with data through code. Expose more people to what they can do with data - build data literacy and share code.Stepping towards sharing not just ideas but also code/tools as data formats are increasingly standard

Paper review: Please be ready to contribute as a reviewer and also by submitting your own papers. Goal to have quality reviews by not overly burdening anyone. Eric will put out a call for calls for papers. (TRB hasn’t decided yet about whether there will be a call for papers next year - you can always do an informal call through your own networks.

If you recommend a paper for consideration by TRR, please include comments with reasons why you think it should be included.

Young Members: Nat has selected 2 people who can serve as co-coordinators to assist.THanks to all who have expressed interest. Potential to create a group for young members - doesn’t necessarily need to be a formal/official subcommittee - those who are “young at heart” are welcome.How can our committee be more welcoming for young people?

CCC - currently vacant - we are actively looking as a group to select someone among those who have expressed interest. This will be the primary person to send emails to friends/members, updating website (GitHub Pages), helping to develop TSP, considering communication strategies (e.g. Slack channel, etc).Possiblity for LinkedIn group, Google group?

Moving towards creating data and identifying measurable responsibilities/outcomes.

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Liaisons Report Out

• Derald Dudley, BTS
• Drew Dara-Abrams, Standards (slide)
• Holly Krambeck, GTFS/World Bank
• Kari Watkins, (T-SCORE Center)
• Oded Cats, TU Delft (slides)
• Roberta Weisbrod, Ferry Safety
• Matthew Dickins, APTA

Derald/BTS - continued work on National Transit Map. Adding 50-75 agencies this iteration. Latest version should be released by the end of January. State DOTs are increasingly acting as GTFS aggregators - States and larger jurisdictions encouraged to facilitate this.

Holly/WorldBank - Use of GTFS to map transportation networks in Haiti / Sierra Leone

Kari/TSCORE - A few products coming out to understand/combat changes/declines in transit ridership over time. Link to TSCORE in chat - reach out if interested in staying in the loop.

Ferry Safety - has funding to instrumentize ferry vessels with weather equipment. Effort to collect more realtime data related to Ferry Safety.

Update on GTFS specifications

GTFS Fares-v2 (Under Debate and Revision)

• Proposed addition to support fare networks, leg rules, transfer rules, containers, and rider profiles
• Interline and MTC produce data for 30+ Bay Area agencies, including contactless Clipper Card

GTFS Performance (Experimental)

• Standardized format for historical transit performance data proposed by Swiftly and Remix
• Aligned with TCRP G-18
• Interline is producing "stop observations" using SF Bay Area Regional GTFS Realtime Feed

GTFS Pathways (Adopted)

• Schematic mapping of station complexes
• Mark accessibility for wheelchair users
• Enrich with directional signage and exit names/numbers for wayfinding instructions
• Interline and MTC produce data for ~35 �Bay Area station complexes
• Interline also offers Station Editor �to agencies as a SaaS web app or �full-service data creation

Questions? drew@interline.io

CASPT and TransitData 2022: CASPT.org

The premier gathering for world’s leading public transport participants from the academia, industry and government

• The 15^th conference on Advanced Systems in Public Transport
• The 8^th International Workshop and Symposium on Research and Applications on the Use of Passive Data from Public Transport
• 1 March: Deadline for extended abstracts (<1000 words) or full papers

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Smart Public Transport Lab @ TU Delft

o.cats@tudelft.nl

SmartPTLab.TUDelft.nl

FTA/Volpe Center Market Study- Use Cases for Data Science in Public Transit

(David’s slides)

Is FTA doing work on data warehousing? Yes, but this project didn’t go into depth on that topic.

Were applications primarily in planning, or more operations, marketing etc? It broke down about 50/50 operations/planning. Avoided looking at automated vehicles since there’s plenty of research on that.

Which data science are now mainstream and which are viewed as cutting-edge or funded by one-off innovation programs? How do innovative programs become mainstream? The report will include specific success stories

Connections with other research bodies like NSF? We work with TRB committees and sometimes have partnership with other federal agencies like the DoE. NSF is currently doing a lot of research on mobility - there probably should be more coordination.

Emerging Data Science for Transit

Market Scan and Feasibility Analysis

An FTA/Volpe Center Research Project

David Schneider

FTA Office of Research, Demonstration and Innovation

January 19, 2022

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Objectives

• Define and demystify “emerging data science” and how it compares to conventional data analytics.
• Provide use cases and lessons learned from transit agencies using data science methods to improve planning and operations.
• Identify challenges involved with and prerequisites to using advanced data science.
• Publish a report for a non-technical audience (such as transit agency CIOs and other leadership) who are thinking about using emerging data science.

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Background

• Transit agencies have access to increasing amounts of data:
• Legacy data (manual passenger counts, customer surveys)
• ITS data (Automatic vehicle locators, Automatic passenger counters, Automatic Fare collection. Video data)
• Novel, third-party data (i.e smartphones, Inrex, probes, etc)
• Agencies have expressed concerns that they are “data rich and information poor”
• Rich data environment creates opportunities as well as challenges for emerging data science methods.

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Conventional Uses of Transit Data: KPIs and Dashboards

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Ways of Defining Emerging vs. Traditional Data Analytics

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Additional Ways to Define Emerging Data Science

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Additional Ways to Define Emerging Data Science

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Study Methodology and Timeframe

• Project kickoff (Fall 2020)
• Scoped/defined “emerging data science” and literature review (Fall 2020)
• Interviewed staff of organizations that were using emerging data science methods and organizations that were interested in doing so (Winter—Summer 2021).
• Small, medium, large organizations
• Geographic diversity
• Mostly transit agencies but some non-profits as well
• Draft report (Fall 2021)
• Final report expected winter/spring 2022

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Real World Emerging Data Science Use Cases

• Asset health monitoring and predictive maintenance
• Using telematics data and Machine Learning to identify when a vehicle needs maintenance.
• Using computer vision and machine learning to automate rail inspections (FRA)
• Occupant counting and monitoring
• Using cameras and algorithms to track and predict in-vehicle and station crowding
• Operational tools
• Bus arrival prediction using machine learning
• Operator assignment/ratio optimization

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Real World Emerging Data Science Use Cases

• Operational tools
• Natural language processing of texts, social media, tweets, etc to understand customer sentiment
• Planning, Scheduling, and Performance Management
• Using location-based service (such as smart phone) data in bus service redesign.

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Different Agency Approaches

• Both “exploratory” and “problem-driven” methods are being used.
• Exploratory methods typically involve in-house staff
• Problem-driven methods often involve a contractor
• Some smaller agencies have a single data scientist, others have assembled small teams, some use interns or partnerships with Universities.
• Some data teams are located in the agency’s IT office, others are located in operational units (i.e. planning, maintenance) some teams are independent of any other unit and report directly to CEO.

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Challenges

• Ensuring data collection technology (such as automated passenger counters) is working correctly
• Data Hygiene (cleaning, transforming, etc)
• Integrating existing data sets and data systems
• Limited in-house expertise with emerging data science tools
• Lack of staff who understand the complete data pipeline.
• Vendor expectations vs. reality and vendor lock-in.

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Prerequisites and Recommendations

• Data quality, hygiene, organization is a precursor to success.
• See: Guidebook for Managing Data from Emerging Technologies for Transportation.
• Make data available, shareable.
• Domain and technical expertise are both critical.
• Use vendors for targeted, narrowly focused projects.
• Establish data as a cross-departmental resource
• Leverage informal peer networks

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Follow-on Research: Location Based Systems

• We’re planning on taking a deeper dive in the potential and challenges of using LBS data for transit planning and operations.
• Service planning/redesign?
• Estimating ridership?
• Evaluating service performance?
• Measuring impact of transit-oriented development?
• Considerations:
• Accuracy
• Privacy
• Cost
• We’d like your input.

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For more information contact:

• David Schneider
• Data Scientist, FTA Office of Research, Demonstration, and Innovation
• 202-493-0175
• David.schneider@dot.gov

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• David Perlman
• Project Manager
• The Volpe Center
• David.Perlman@dot.gov

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TRANSIT.DOT.GOV

Questions?

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TCRP G-18

(Cecilia’s slides)

Improving Access and Management of Public Transit ITS Data� ​�Summary of forthcoming report sponsored by the �Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP)

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Updated: January 19, 2022

IMPROVING ACCESS AND MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC TRANSIT ITS DATA

Background and Motivation

Background

Transit agencies are collecting increasingly granular data on vehicle movement, service performance, ridership, customer behavior, and financial recovery:

• Automatic vehicle location (AVL)
• Automatic passenger counters (APC)
• Automatic fare collection (AFC)

However, transit agencies face many challenges in accessing, validating, storing, and analyzing these data sets.

Motivation

This project developed a standard structure for historical fixed route ITS data, along with a set of supporting tool requirements, to:

• Promote open-source tool and third-party tool development
• Enable transit agencies to share data support protocols and practices
• Encourage vendors to provide data in consistent formats
• Allow transit agencies to more easily generate accurate key performance indicators

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IMPROVING ACCESS AND MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC TRANSIT ITS DATA

Research Process

Driven by ITS community needs:

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• 10 Transit agencies
• 5 ITS vendors
• 5 Stakeholders

• >50 participants
• Use cases
• Data flows and fields
• Tool requirements

• 3 Transit agencies
• Online feedback (>100 comments)

IMPROVING ACCESS AND MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC TRANSIT ITS DATA

Key Findings

ITS Data Needs

• Address range of agency capabilities
• Challenges in management, validation, cleaning
• Support estimates of:
• Boardings & alightings (ridership, load, fare revenue)
• Travel time (runtime, dwell time, on-time performance)

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Conditions for Adoption

• Ongoing advocacy, education
• Compatibility with procurement cycles
• Community of practice and clear governance processes for management and evolution

Standard Success Factors

• Flexibility to accommodate diverse transit and data collection systems
• Collaborative end-user-oriented development
• Consideration of cost and effort of implementation
• Support for Key Performance Indicators
• Alignment with GTFS

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IMPROVING ACCESS AND MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC TRANSIT ITS DATA

Objectives and Approach

Designed to Support High- Priority KPIs

(by time period)

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IMPROVING ACCESS AND MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC TRANSIT ITS DATA

Roadmap

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Supports two different paths – one for transit agencies that receive discrete event data and an alternative for transit agencies that receive only summary data files.

IMPROVING ACCESS AND MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC TRANSIT ITS DATA

Data Structure

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IMPROVING ACCESS AND MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC TRANSIT ITS DATA

Tool Requirements

Format Validation Tool

• Check data types
• Verify required fields are provided
• Ensure unique-identifying fields match across files
• Check for duplicate rows

© EBP | 43

Data Transfer Tool

• Summarize, aggregate, or group data from event data files to generate summary data files

Data Quality Tool

• Identify missing values
• Validate chronology, speeds, loads, and fare transactions based on user-configured ranges
• Categorize data quality issue severity

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Data Analysis Tool

• Generate KPIs from summary data files

IMPROVING ACCESS AND MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC TRANSIT ITS DATA

Best Practices

• Versioning data
• Uniting data from multiple ITS sources
• Integrating the data structure with GTFS
• Cleaning data

• Maintaining information on different types of trips
• Generating and maintaining unique identifiers
• Using specific fields
• Using the data structure in special cases
• Communicating and using results

© EBP | 44

The report provides guidance for using the data structure in a series of best practices that can grow and evolve with adoption of the data structure.

IMPROVING ACCESS AND MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC TRANSIT ITS DATA

Adoption and Governance

Adoption can be supported through:

• Tool development – enables transit agencies to implement the data structure and gain the benefits of adoption, such as smoother processes for estimating KPIs.
• Pilot efforts – support transit agencies in converting their data to the structure and develop more detailed implementation guidance to reduce the costs of adoption for transit agencies

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These outcomes will be facilitated by:

• Community of practice – building a group of individuals and organizations committed to the success of the effort
• Clear governance – establishing agreed upon processes for ongoing communication, promotion, management, and evolution of the approach

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© EBP | 45

IMPROVING ACCESS AND MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC TRANSIT ITS DATA

Contact: cecilia.viggiano@ebp-us.com

Thanks!

IMPROVING ACCESS AND MANAGEMENT OF PUBLIC TRANSIT ITS DATA

Other Reports

• Alla Reddy
• Steven Yaffe, Health/Transport

Alla retired from MTA last January - working on building a team for transit data and operations. Not currently easy to integrate all the available data, but the data is potentially very useful for planning/scheduling/operations.

Steve - Just came from presentation on GTFS-Ride. NADC.org - look for 2020 trends reports, including Medicare advantage - major player in demand response. IPATHinc.org putting together roving virtual conference. September transit / demand response conference (TRANSED).

We are quickly morphing towards intermodal linked trips, need for integration, standard data formats that include public and private sector players.NUMO leading discussion on data privacy.

~ 2 minutes please!

Next Steps

• Triennial Strategic Plan
• Looking for volunteers to start meeting monthly
• Research Sub-group Volunteers
• Need volunteers to digest data, be the eyes and ears, submit TCRP proposals
• Workshop -> Virtual Format
• Organizers, etc etc
• Informal Interagency Webinar Series
• Volunteers for helping coordinate
• Future calls for papers
• Liaison Opportunities

TSP - Informal guidance is to focus on what you’re going to do - list other TRB committees that are similar - consider related APTA committees as well. TSPs have been very data-oriented in the past, which places burden on support staff. May be sufficient to list titles of sessions. Major effort shouldn’t be on tracking numbers, but on what we’ll do. Think about connections by domain (transit) and technology (data analytics).

Some papers from AEB20(3) use transit data for evaluating operations - possible connection

Request: Struggle with connecting GTFS data to roadways - it would be helpful to get speed data - not just stop-to-stop, but intersection-to-intersection - if you have an idea, contact Jim Bunch.(a couple suggestions in chat)

We will be archiving the chat.

Transit Data Challenge��

Thursday, January 20, 2022�12:30 - 2:00 PM EST � 9:30 - 11:00 AM PST

​

Register with this QR Code —>