Model-Based Analytics and Processes for Transportation Investment Alternatives Analyses: From Least Cost Planning to Multi Criterion Evaluation

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DATE: 
Friday, November 6, 2015, 12:00pm to 1:00pm PST
SPEAKERS: 
Jeff Frkonja, Director, Metro Research Center

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Many public and private organizations that make decisions regarding whether and how to invest in transportation assets or programs do so via a structured decision-support process. This talk will address the technical aspects of the family of such processes that use travel demand model outputs—and other sources of quantified performance data—as inputs to analytic tools including benefit cost analysis (BCA) and multi criterion evaluation. Example applications of this framework have included tolling and pricing studies, capital investment alternatives analyses, and programmatic evaluations. Example processes include "Least Cost Planning" frameworks borrowed originally from the power generation industry.

The talk will also address some of the "process" requirements necessary for successful deployment of the analytics for actual decision applications, and will include an open discussion of potential criteria for both technical and process success in the Portland metropolitan area. Come prepared with your thoughts on questions such as: are these techniques valuable for regional stakeholders? What technical features are particularly important to this region? What outreach, education, and information should regional stakeholders be given to best understand and participate in this type of decision-support process?

Jeff Frkonja is the Director of the Research Center at Oregon Metro. The Research Center provides geospatial data resources, travel and land use forecasting, advanced analytics, and decision support to Metro and the Portland region. Jeff joined Metro after several years in Chicago working for RSG, a private consultancy supplying model development, model application, and market research to public and private clients. He led the Forecast Group for RSG and in that role developed tolling/pricing models, developed regional travel demand models, and conducted transit ridership and other alternatives analyses. Prior to RSG, Jeff worked at FHWA and the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC). His role at PSRC as the head of its Model & Data Applications Group encompassed some of the same duties he now has at Metro, and started his participation in national transportation research as well. Jeff is an avid bicyclist and is delighted to be back in the great Northwest where he can bicycle, climb, and ski real hills and mountains.