DKS is working with Southwest Washington Regional Transportation Council (RTC) conducting a Regional Origin-Destination (OD) Study to understand regional travel patterns and help inform future transportation decisions in Clark County, Washington. Studying regional origin-destination behavior is critical in understanding the big picture travel patterns of where people really need to go – not what road they happen to be on because of congestion. This knowledge enables decisions that provide a meaningful difference to the transportation system and to peoples travel needs.

Rather than collecting raw travel data, DKS used a “big data” approach to leverage vehicle probe data available from INRIX through Moonshadow Mobile’s DB4IoT web platform. This data includes anonymized location/time-based waypoint and routing information collected from vehicle fleets and crowd-sourced GPS data. The dataset provides a sample of the traveling population.

Using OD data collected from modern technology and data sources has been implemented on prior transportation planning projects. What makes this application more exciting is that it goes beyond the origins and destinations. The INRIX Trips data includes waypoints or intermediate travel pings that help transportation planners and engineers understand the trip route. The data provides a real-world model based on a sample of actual travel patterns over a one-year period. The innovative analysis we have been able to conduct through this data includes:

  • Regional OD patterns on the freeway system (e.g., how much traffic for each on-ramp is using each downstream off-ramp), regional flow summaries (e.g., what portion of traffic leaving a suburb is destined to work in another suburb – and what portion of traffic uses various routes)
  • Regional flow summaries (e.g., what portion of traffic leaving a suburb is destined to work in another suburb – and what portion of traffic uses various routes)
  • Qualitative speed differential on adjacent lanes (e.g., how does speed vary on multilane facilities)
  • Identify traffic diversion routes that occur during congested periods
  • Perform data analysis queries on-the-fly in a workshop setting using the DB4IoT interface

“Here at the SW Washington Regional Transportation Council (RTC), we are responsible for dealing with regional transportation planning for the Vancouver, WA metropolitan area. We’ve been working with DKS Associates for a number of years, and are very excited about the valuable and innovative tool they have built in partnership with Moonshadow Mobile using INRIX Connected Vehicle data.  The dynamic Origin and Destination analysis tools allow us to easily ask questions around regional trip distribution, complex trip corridor patterns, and diversion on local streets. The dashboard approach to data analytics allows us to ask questions on the fly, in a workshop setting, and to answer new questions as they come up.”  – Bob Hart, Project Manager, RTC