Federal Transit Administration (FTA) forecasting workshops

Many years ago, I found an excellent resource for transit modelling: slides from a series of 2006-2009 workshops held by the US Federal Transit Administration (FTA) advising agencies applying for federal funding for rapid transit construction under the “New Starts” funding program. It’s very deeply buried on their website, and since then I’ve seen very few people reference this material, nor have I seen it assembled into a formal report.
So, for those interested – I’ve pulled together an easier-to-use table of contents to the three separate workshops, and tried to “deep link” into them to make it easier to browse and find the material. Enjoy!
UPDATE April 2016 – FTA has reorganized their website and the reports are no longer available there. I’ve mirrored everything here on my website.

2006 Workshop

Workshop held in June 2006 in Minneapolis.

  1. Introduction
  2. “Allowances” in Benefits and Cost-Effectiveness
  3. Benefits from Changes in Other Transit Attributes
  4. Evaluation of Highway Congestion Relief Benefits
  5. Mobility Benefits from Variable Trip Tables
  6. Mobility Benefits from Variable Trip Ends
  7. Predicted and Actual Ridership on New Starts Projects
  8. Library of Survey Data for Quality Control on Forecasts for New Starts Projects
  9. CTPP-based Aggregate Model
  10. Semi-independent Forecasts
  11. Additional Measures for Quality Control of New Starts Forecasts
  12. Summit Update
  13. Early Quality-of-Service Analysis of the Alternatives
  14. Dealing with Uncertainties in New Starts Forecasts
  15. Tracking the Accuracy of Transit Forecasts
  16. Properties of Travel Models for New Starts Forecasting
  17. Calibration and Validation
  18. Methods for Transit Data Collection
  19. Preservation and Analysis of New Starts Travel Forecasts

2007 Workshop

Workshop held in September 2007 in St. Louis, MI.

  1. Welcome
  2. Status Report
  3. Properties of Models
  4. Data Collection
  5. Calibration/Validation
  6. Standard Reporting/QC
  7. Lifting the Cap
  8. CTPP-Based QC Forecasts
  9. Alternative-Specific Effects
  10. Uncertainty Analysis
  11. Before-After Studies
  12. Performance Tracking
  13. Transit Path Choices
  14. Telling a Good Story
  15. Economic Development
  16. Wrap-Up

2009 Workshop

Held in March 2009 in Phoenix, AZ and Tampa, FL.

Day 1: Summit Training

  1. Summit: Introduction
  2. Summit: Analytical Reporting
  3. Summit: Summit Basics
  4. Summit: User Benefits
  5. Summit Examples

Day 2: Workshop

  1. Welcome
  2. Lessons Learned, 2003-2008
  3. Guidance
  4. Data on Ridership Patterns – Collection Methods
  5. Data on Ridership Patterns – Some Examples
  6. The ARRF II Model
  7. Model Testing – Methods
  8. Model Testing – Some Examples
  9. Analytical Support of Cases for Projects
  10. Uncertainty Analysis
  11. Before-and-After Studies – Methods
  12. Before-and-After Studies – Examples
  13. Simplified Methods for Small Starts
  14. Current Research
  15. Wrap-Up

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