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Planning Information at Your Fingertips

Top Interactive Web Applications at WFRC

2023 ITE Utah Section Annual Meeting

March 21, 2023

Bill Hereth – Chris Day – Bert Granberg – Josh Reynolds

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Our Web App Philosophy

present a Wide Range of Data including forecasts, model outputs, and big data

to a Diverse Audience comprised of elected officials, professionals & public

in a Seamless Manner that quickly reacts to user interaction

allowing for Exploration & Discovery using the familiar to orient to the regional context

with Supporting Information provided through charts and tables

that Fosters a Solutions Mindset via information empowerment!

Data, data, data! Data is everywhere! As a Metropolitan Planning Organization, WFRC presents our data to a diverse audience of elected officials, transportation professionals, and the public.

And we want to do in it a way that avoids information overload. So many of these apps are pretty simple, but they do contain a lot of information. I myself and others I’ve talked to have lost themselves for hours in some of these apps.

These apps put planning information at your fingertips. You don’t need a travel demand model or GIS to see the data. Just a web browser.

Our goal is to enable others to explore data and information in a way that can help them understand a regional context and allow them to dig into details where they need it.

We believe being more open with our data and information can bring others to the table in a more productive way.

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Interactive Web Apps

Traffic

AADT - Historic & Forecast Map https://wfrc.org/traffic-volume-map
Traffic Congestion Forecast Map https://wfrc.org/traffic-vc-map
CCS Factors Map https://wfrc.org/ccs-factors-map

Origin-Destination

Trip Movement Estimates Map https://wfrc.org/small-districts-od-map
Commuter Flow Map https://wfrc.org/testing/commuter-flow-map

Access-to-Opportunities

ATO Map https://wfrc.org/ato-map

Household Job Forecast

Household Job Forecast Map https://wfrc.org/household-job-forecast-map

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Utah Statewide AADT Forecasts Map

AADT Traffic Volumes & Forecasts by Roadway Segments for entire state
Updated every 4 years with RTPs
Historic & Future 2024, 2030, 2040, 2050 –Cache, Dixie, Summit & Wasatch 2050 only
Advanced Version

Population and employment by TAZ
Transportation Plan Projects

https://wfrc.org/traffic-volume-map

Traffic Volume Map Presentation

http://bit.ly/trafficvolume

I will present on 3 apps that are in our Traffic Data category. Our first app is the Utah Statewide AADT forecasts map.

Roadway volume forecasts are one of the main products we produce at WFRC, other MPOs, and UDOT. As part of the Unified Transportation Plan, we combine all of them into a single app every four years. This app contains forecasts for each phase of the transportation plan through 2050 for most of the state.

In addition to roadway volume forecasts, this app also includes an “advanced version” that puts socioeconomics and plan projects data at your fingertip.

This is our most popular app with hundreds of hits every month. It helps to answer questions like: What will traffic volumes look like in the future? How will traffic grow over time? How will traffic respond to the projects we are planning for?

First of all there a three parts to this app… a map with the information, a side panel to control the display and show more details as you click through the map, and an about window that has details about the data release.

One thing to mention… this map is based off 2019, to which WFRC and MAG have adjusted their interim year forecasts. If you want to see the 2015 map, click on the link in the about panel.

The about panel also contains information on who to contact for questions and links to download the data used in the map.

Let’s zoom out and walk through some of the data. First of all, there is a county filter. If you use this map a lot and don’t want to see Salt Lake County all the time when you open it. Just click a different county in the filter, and the map will automatically re-center to the last county selected each time you return to it.

Let me add the legend here and move it out of the way. Let’s go to Davis County and see how things look there. You can click on each year and see the volumes forecasted for that year. If you zoom in a bit, you can see the labels.

Then you can also see how volumes change over the plan phase years. The blues are where traffic drops and the reds are where it grows and the darkness shows the intensity.

Over the span of the plan, from 2019 to 2050, you can see how West Davis Corridor, US-89, the 1800 N interchange improvements fundamentally change some traffic patterns in Davis County. If you step through the phase years you can see more detail in how this happens over time. Now Utah County to see Lehi. You can see with the SR-92 extension in 2030, traffic volumes shift about 16,000 off of Triumph onto the new Jordan River crossing.

As a traffic engineer doing a traffic impact study, I could use this map to get growth rates for the roadway adjacent to a new project. Let’s click on Triumph Blvd in Lehi and you can details of the observed traffic data and the forecasts.

�And additionally, you can click on “View Advanced Version’ and two additional widgets are accessible. The Traffic Forecasts tab on the left, is what we have been in, but now there is also a Pop/Emp forecasts tab, and Unified Plan Projects tab.

In the Pop/Emp forecasts tab you can see socioeconomic details at the TAZ level up to county level. On the sidebar, you can select a county and city… Let’s select Lehi. and see the forecasts for all these TAZs in Lehi. You can select from multiple socioeconomic factors. And you can see a total or a density.

Or you can click “select TAZs in Map” and set you own custom query of TAZs.. Let’s say I have a study area Thanksgiving Point. I select these TAZ and the charts on the side update to match my selection.

As a reminder, the data here is currently from the adopted 2019 RTP.

Josh will show you an app at the end that will show the draft household and job forecasts for the 2023 RTP to be finalized later this year.

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AADT Adjustment Factors

Factors calculated from Continuous Count Stations statewide
Factors are from CCS grouped by geography and functional classification
AADT Adjustment factors for Day-of-Week, Season, Month
Calculated from 2015-2019 data

https://wfrc.org/ccs-factors-map

GitHub Repository

https://github.com/WFRCAnalytics/UDOT-Segment-Factors

On to our next app…. One limitation of traffic forecasts is that they are only produced for a single time period, like an average weekday. To get some seasonal or day-of-week variation, we also calculate adjustment factors. These factors are based on Continuous Count Station data, also known as ATRs. These stations record continuous volumes for hundreds of locations throughout the state.

To calculate factors that can be applied to roadways, stations are grouped by geography and functional type. The groupings we used are a little different than the groupings Nicolas Black at UDOT creates, since they were customized for planning applications. But we try to follow the same methodology.

These factors were calculated for each day-of-the-week, weekday groups like Tuesday-Thursday or weekends, each month of the year, and each season of the year. You can visualize the factors and quickly explore the data in depth in this app. As a data nerd, I think it’s really cool.

Questions you can help answer quickly with this app: How do seasonal patterns differ throughout the state? How is Big Cottownwood Canyon different from Little Cottonwood? How is traffic different in St. George, or any other part of the state?

Let’s jump into the app.

The left side of the app is where you can control which groupings to show factors for, and then the right side with a map shows what stations and roadway segments are in that group.

Let’s quickly go through just a couple scenarios.

Let’s say I want to see Big Cottownwood and see traffic patterns there. I can either select the group in the drop down here, if I know what it is. Or I can zoom to the roadway segment directly and click it.

When I select the group or click a segment, all the other segments that share the same factors are displayed, together with their factors on the left.

For Big Cottonwood we can see high winter and summer distribution. And when we click on Little Cottonwood we can see a lower summer peak. And then clicking a suburban roadway, we can see how the urban area is different.

You can use these factors to adjust forecasts or traffic counts to get more specific day-of-week and seasonal volumes for your projects.

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Traffic Congestion Forecast

WFRC+MAG Area
Adjusted volume forecasts (not raw model output) for 2024-2050
AM/PM 3-Hour, Midday 6-Hour, 1-Hour Peak, 15-Min
No-build, fiscally-constrained, and needs-based scenarios
Segment level details on sidebar

Chart comparing forecasts between scenarios
All data necessary to calculate V/Cs

https://wfrc.org/traffic-vc-map

Traffic Congestion Forecast Methodology

http://bit.ly/vcmapmethodology

Our final app in the traffic data category is the Traffic Congestion Forecast app.

Unlike the previous two that were statewide, this app uses data from the TDM for only the Wasatch Front.

We aren’t forecasting whether you’ll experience congestion on your way home from work today… We are forecasting potential congestion for a given future scenario.

This is actually just a simple volume-over-capacity map using some extra factors that are not in the TDM.

To get more detailed time periods than the TDM, we factor the model 3-hour volume to a 1-hour volume using the CCS data we just discussed and we can get to 15-minute volumes using some peak hour factor assumptions. You can click on the methodology link to see all the assumptions this app is based on.

The V/Cs aren’t raw model outputs but are recalculated based on adjusted volumes using the forecasts we talked about earlier. But, even with adjustments you’ll still notice evidence of some model idiosyncrasies, especially where the model volumes are quite a bit different than observed volumes in the base year.

There are scenarios for the no-build (which roadway capacity is defined here as Existing + 2024 STIP projects). You can select any possible combination of future phase year scenarios from the drop down.

And then there are details for any segment you click on that will show how the v/c ratios compare across scenarios and details to see how the v/c was calculated.

I’ll just quickly show the features.

Like the previous app, the left panel controls the display and has a simple legend. Anything under 0.70 v/c is green, and then transitions to yellow as you get closer to 1.0. Over 1.0 is red and gets darker until it hits black at a v/c ratio of 2.0. These are travel demand models, which are quite different from a Vissim model, so the model will show V/Cs greater than 1.0 and doesn’t react to congestion by modeling spillback likely a Vissim model would.

One example of where this has been useful. For Legacy Parkway, our models little signs of congestion well into the future. However, even today that doesn’t quite match reality. We do have current observations, at least prior to COVID, that do suggest there some congestion on Legacy. So, why is the TDM not showing reality there.

So, if we go to Legacy Parkway and click 2019 Base, you can see Legacy is kind of yellow, so it’s approaching capacity in the model. But since the TDM models only a 3-hour peak period, some of the shorter periods of congestion may not show up accurately. However, if you click on 1-Hour option, then you can better see congestion on Legacy as it’s volumes cross the capacity threshold into the red. This gets more pronounced as you select the peak 15-Minute time period.

To get more details, let’s click on a segment of Legacy and see everything added to the side panel. There are V/C ratios across all scenarios, forecast volumes, and capacity characteristics. Then if you click on “Calculation Details” you can get only what a true traffic engineer would ever want, the complete breakdown of factors used to calculate the V/C ratio.

That’s it for the traffic data applications.

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Origin-Destination Data Web Apps

Trip Movement Estimates

Commuter Flow

Big Data - StreetLight
Visualize origin and destination of trips
Small District Geography
Total or Percentage
By year, season, day of week, period of day
By Mode

Big Data - LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES)
Visualize where individuals work and live
City, Small District, Tract, and Block Group Geographies
Number of people or Percentage
Comparison with StreetLight

Alright. Thanks Bill. I’m Chris Day. I joined WFRC’s team about a year ago. And just a few months ago I starting working with some of the web apps. To be clear though, Bill is the main mastermind behind all of these awesome tools. (so fi you have a hard question about them be sure to ask him).

Anyway, I wanted to present on two tools dealing with origin-destination data. You know, where people start and end their trips and where people live and work.

The first webapp is our trip movement estimates map. This map visualizes some Big Data from StreetLight. It shows the origin and destination of the trip at the small district geography level. There are also some really cool filter by year, season, day of the week, and period of the. There is even a filter by mode!

The second webapp dealing with OD data is our commuter flow map. This map visualizes a different Big Data source – the LODES data or the LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics dataset. It shows where individuals work and live by varying geographies. We are also currently building a beta feature that compares this dataset with the OD data from StreetLight.

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Trip Movement Estimates Map

wfrc.org/small-districts-od-map

Here’s a video presentation of the trip movement estimates map. As you can see, it can display the total number of trips by zone as origins or destinations. In other words, you select any specific area, and it will display where people that go to that area come from, or where people within that area are going. As opposed to viewing the total number of trips, you can also visualize it as the percentage of trips. You also have the ability to filter by year, season, day of the week, and time of the day. So for example, if you want to know the origin location of all the individuals who travel to the airport small district on a tuesday, in the morning, in july of 2021 – you can do that! You can also filter by mode.

It has a lot of power and possibilities, all dependent on what you want to see.

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Commuter Flow Map

wfrc.org/commuter-flow-map

Now here is a video of someone using the commuter flow map. As you can see, for any selected city, let's say North Salt Lake, you can visualize in which locations the residents of North Salt Lake are working, and in which locations the workers of North Salt Lake are living. You can view these statistics by total number of people, or percentage of trips within the zone as a whole or as a subset of an area. Another cool feature is that you can see the home and work locations of any city at the city, small district, tract, or block group level – all depending on what level of detail you desire.

Looking at the buttons toward the top, you are apple to visualize the streetlight data in the same way – with all the same functionality. You can even view county statistics.

The last button allows you to view a comparison between the LODES and the StreetLight data as either total difference or percentage difference between the two datasets.��Again this is another powerful tool with a lot of capabilities. A helpful tools to better understanding OD data.

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Access to Opportunities (ATO)

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Access to Opportunities (ATO)

Mobility -- travel choices and speed��Proximity -- distance apart��Accessibility -- ease of reaching key destinations

+

=

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Access to Opportunities (ATO)

ATO is a more comprehensive measure of the transportation system's performance�
Calculations from the travel demand model�
Current and future�
Road and transit�
Distance Decayed, household or employer perspective…"within a typical commute"

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Access to Opportunities Menu

wfrc.org/ato-map

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Access to Opportunities Menu

wfrc.org/ato-map

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Access to Opportunities Menu

wfrc.org/ato-map

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Access to Opportunities Menu

wfrc.org/ato-map

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Access to Opportunities Menu

wfrc.org/ato-map

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Access to Opportunities TDM Travelsheds

wfrc.org/ato-map

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Household and Job Forecasts Demo

wfrc.org/household-job-forecast-map

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Resources

Contact: analytics@wfrc.org
Additional Interactive Web Applications

WFRC Resources

Map Gallery: maps.wfrc.org
GitHub repositories: github.com/WFRCAnalytics

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Appendix

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Utah Statewide AADT Forecasts

AADT shows forecast for given year.

AADT Change will show volume differences between years… (blue decrease, red increase)

wfrc.org/traffic-volume-map

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Utah Statewide AADT Forecasts

Click on segment in map, or use county, route, segment filter, to get history and forecast details

Advanced Version Pop/Emp Forecasts: Click on Select TAZs from Map to get custom aggregate data

wfrc.org/traffic-volume-map

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Utah Statewide AADT Forecasts

wfrc.org/traffic-volume-map

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CCS AADT Adjustment Factors

wfrc.org/ccs-factors-map

Select CCS Group (facility type, geography, and volume) and associated factors will display

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CCS AADT Adjustment Factors

wfrc.org/ccs-factors-map

Select roadway segment in map, and it will give you give you the factors for that link and highlight all other links in the same group.

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Traffic Congestion Forecast

wfrc.org/traffic-vc-map

Select desired scenario and time (period, peak hour, peak 15-min) and time of of day.

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Traffic Congestion Forecast

wfrc.org/traffic-vc-map

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Traffic Congestion Forecast

wfrc.org/traffic-vc-map