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Transportation Development - Planning

Sample Work
Revision of the Redmond Model

Map of RedmondThe Transportation Planning Analysis Unit (TPAU) constructs, houses, and maintains Travel Demand Models (TDM) for urban areas through out the state of Oregon. In 2007 TPAU revised the model for Redmond, Oregon. The Redmond model was originally released in 2003, but significant new land use projects required an expansion and update of the Redmond TDM.  


This seemingly straight forward review and expansion of the model faced several challenges that proved to be challenging and rewarding. First, over the four year time span since the Redmond model was first released, several upgrades to the model logic maintained by TPAU had been made and needed to be applied to the revised Redmond model. These upgrades included, improved reporting capabilities, graphical interface, and simplified storage and access of model results.
 
Second, along with expanding the model boundaries and incorporating new land use
development and assumptions came updating the Redmond Model road network to include all
current projects on the ground and in the development in addition to future projects planned for
the future. Both land use and network changes required review and collaboration with city,
county, and state agencies to assure all projects and issues were being addressed and
incorporated correctly.
 
Third, Redmond is located in Central Oregon approximately seventeen miles north of Bend.
Central Oregon, but especially the city of Bend has been experiencing high growth over the past
few years. Accompanying this growth are large resorts outside of city limits. These resorts act
as small cities; however are outside of all current model boundaries making accounting for the
influence they create a challenge. Part of revising the Redmond model included creating a submodel logic to account for future destination resorts and their traffic patterns in Central Oregon.
 
Next steps, currently TPAU is creating a full Central Oregon Model which will be able to better
account for the growth in Central Oregon, interactions between closely spaced cities, and destination resorts. This model will help TPAU better assess future interaction between the
population areas in Central Oregon, mainly the give and take between competing expansion
areas and the implications to current and planned infrastructure.

 
Development of the RVMPO Model
Map RVMPOThe Transportation Planning Analysis Unit (TPAU) constructs, houses, and maintains Travel Demand Models (TDM) for urban areas through out the state of Oregon. Part of this work
includes providing modeling support for three Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO) in Oregon. This modeling support provides information that is necessary for the MPOs to meet
their planning obligations under state and federal laws.

The Rogue Valley Metropolitan Planning Organization (RVMPO) first came into existence in 1982, when it was confirmed that the urbanized area population in Medford and the immediate vicinity exceeded 50,000. The MPO boundary was expanded following the 1990 Census, and again following the 2000 Census. The MPO boundary currently includes the cities of Ashland, Central Point, Eagle Point, Jacksonville, Medford, Phoenix and Talent, and nearby portions of Jackson County. The Rogue Valley Council of Governments (RVCOG) is the lead agency and provides the staffing for the RVMPO.

The travel demand model for the RVMPO has been improved with each expansion of the MPO
to take advantage of advances in the practice of travel demand modeling. The first model for the
MPO was a simple quick response gravity model which utilized many default parameters derived
from national data. In the 1990s, a more advanced model was built using the latest discrete
choice modeling techniques and household travel survey data collected for the Medford area.
This model is currently referred to as the RVCOG model to distinguish it from the new RVMPO
model which covers the present MPO planning area. The RVMPO model uses recent modeling
research and development in Oregon by ODOT, Metro and other MPOs to develop a jointly estimated model that is programmed in the R programming language (JEMnR). This new model has also been connected up with traffic routing software (VISUM) to enable fully automated model runs in a software platform, along with an improved graphical interface and spatially linked data that will make it easier for the MPO to test planning alternatives and communicate the results.

To further assist RVMPO, TPAU is employing its most recent development, LUSDR (Land Use
ScenarioDevelopeR). LUSDR gives users the ability to test transportation networks against an
array of possible future land uses and to do transportation analysis and planning from a risk
assessment standpoint. LUSDR allows users to not only see how transportation infrastructure
will perform under a range of possible future outcomes, but also provides municipalities with a
tool to assist with planning future growth. Work underway will link the LUSDR model to the JEMnR model to allow the MPO to do integrated land use and transportation modeling. When this work is completed, the RVMPO area will be one of a small number of MPOs in the country with the ability to do integrated modeling.
 
Creation-Central Oregon Model

Next steps, currently TPAU is creating a full Central Oregon Model which will be able to better account for the growth in Central Oregon, interactions between closely spaced cities, and destination resorts.  This model will help TPAU better assess future interaction between the population areas in Central Oregon, mainly the give and take between competing expansion areas and the implications to current and planned infrastructure.

Central Oregon Map 

 
Communicating the Issues
Map Corvallis OregonEngineers are constantly struggling with how to present their brilliant findings to the average audience. The findings might not even be the technical; it’s just hard for engineers to get away from numbers, graphs, and tables (hey, it’s what we know).
 
To help combat this, TPAU has been developing different standard reports to help put this valuable data in a spatial format. The examples on this page show we have put Origin – Destination information into a more readily understood format. Formally this data would have been provided in tables and spreadsheets, fine for an engineer, but what about the project manager or the public.

These plots represent travel patterns for urban areas around Oregon. The shading represents desire to travel to or from the given local; the darker the shading the more people travel to/from that area, using the corridor of interest. This is just one area where TPAU is improving customer service. All over the unit we are improving the services that we provide. We are shaping TPAU to
meet the needs of the future, anticipating the questions before they are asked of us.

Map RVMPO