The Utah Legislature is working to ensure that transportation funding mechanisms are ready and in place to meet future demands and keep Utah moving. Drivers of electric and hybrid vehicles pay a flat fee during their annual registration to compensate for not paying as much fuel tax as drivers of conventional vehicles. These fees pay for operations and maintenance of Utah's transportation system.
In 2020, electric and hybrid vehicle owners will have an option to pay a road usage charge in lieu of their annual fee. In future years, the RUC program could also be a potential replacement to the fuel tax for all vehicles in Utah. UDOT is involved in this effort in order to Keep Utah Moving by making sure future funding will be available to build and maintain our transportation system.
On February 5, Chapel Hill Transit director Brian Litchfield presented a strategic and financial plan update for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber's Economic Development & Public Policy Committee.
The Utah Legislature is working to ensure that transportation funding mechanisms are ready and in place to meet future demands and keep Utah moving. Drivers of electric and hybrid vehicles pay a flat fee during their annual registration to compensate for not paying as much fuel tax as drivers of conventional vehicles. These fees pay for operations and maintenance of Utah's transportation system.
In 2020, electric and hybrid vehicle owners will have an option to pay a road usage charge in lieu of their annual fee. In future years, the RUC program could also be a potential replacement to the fuel tax for all vehicles in Utah. UDOT is involved in this effort in order to Keep Utah Moving by making sure future funding will be available to build and maintain our transportation system.
On February 5, Chapel Hill Transit director Brian Litchfield presented a strategic and financial plan update for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber's Economic Development & Public Policy Committee.
Tnooz chrome river webinar - may 2017 - finaltnooz
A business traveler's most consistent gripe is doing his or her expenses at the end of the trip.
These situations cause huge organizational headaches:
* for the admin team that needs to manually process each expense report for reimbursement and client billing.
* for the CFO who is trying to streamline costs.
* for the finance director who needs to ensure spend is within corporate policy.
* for the travel manager who needs to ensure that program spend is within budget and that negotiated rate spend volumes are maintained.
It needn’t be this difficult. The advent of expense management solutions can dramatically streamline processes for both travelers and back-office staff while controlling costs and providing deep visibility into employees’ spend.
This webinar, presented by Tnooz with Chrome River and US Bank, looks at some of the biggest challenges posed by both manual processes and archaic expense solutions, and how these challenges can be eliminated by modern expense management solutions.
Attend the webinar and learn:
Key challenges that business travelers are facing.
Problems that travel managers/back office deal with every day.
Benefits of travel and expense management solutions that address these challenges head on: traveler experience, financial and card administration, travel program administration, cost control and decision making.
Panelists for our WEBINAR are:
Ted Stavropoulos - director of partner channel development, Chrome River
Bradley Matthews - head of middle market product and marketing, US Bank Corporate Payment Systems
Martin Cowen – contributing editor and moderator, Tnooz
Kevin May – senior editor and producer, Tnooz
This WEBINAR took place on WEDNESDAY 3 MAY 2017.
Richard Horton, Head of Transport Development for Travis Perkins - Operationa...Global Business Events
Richard Horton, Head of Transport Development for Travis Perkins - Operational Efficiencies & Telematics. Richard discusses how to get the most out of Fleet Telematics.
Taming the Travel & Entertainment Expense Beast: Benchmarks & Best PracticesAshley Emery
Travel and entertainment—second only to payroll as the largest business expense—is becoming increasingly more difficult to control as companies expand across borders and grow through acquisitions. Discover how companies are leveraging technology in conjunction with procedural best practices to remove common T&E headaches including: the untimely submission of expense reports, lost receipts, inefficient processes and paperwork relative to reviewing and approving expense reports and ensuring adherence to company travel policies.
MDOT Commuter Choice on the Business Benefits of Expanding your Commuter Bene...CommuterChoiceMaryla
This webinar will provide guidance to employers on how to develop or enhance their commuter benefits program. Learn about: Commuter benefits advantages and benefits, assistance with the Maryland Commuter Tax Credit, strategies that encourage employee participation offerings, Assistance with program implementation, and on-going support.
Please visit: CommuterChoiceMaryland.com
Travel & Expense Management 2015: How to Establish a Successful T&E Policy an...Ashley Emery
As the second largest line item cost for most companies and organizations, travel and expense spending requires careful controls to maintain corporate policy and manage budgets. Each year, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) researches average costs for meals, lodging and incidental expenses in destinations throughout the 48 continental states. As a well-defined and well-researched guideline, the GSA per diem rate framework can be used by any organization to create a successful travel and expense management policy with greater control and visibility into T&E spend.
How Diversifying Your Shipping Strategy Can Drive Value for Your OrganizationGSO2015
Find out how adding a Regional Overnight Delivery Provider to Your Shipping Mix Will Improve Service for Customers and Lower Your Shipping Costs. You'll find that there are many great Regional Alternatives to UPS and FedEx.
Texas Pedestrian Safety Forum, July 12, 2018
When Your Urban Core Arrives | University Drive in College Station Presented by James Robertson, Ph.D., P.E., Lee Engineering
Tnooz chrome river webinar - may 2017 - finaltnooz
A business traveler's most consistent gripe is doing his or her expenses at the end of the trip.
These situations cause huge organizational headaches:
* for the admin team that needs to manually process each expense report for reimbursement and client billing.
* for the CFO who is trying to streamline costs.
* for the finance director who needs to ensure spend is within corporate policy.
* for the travel manager who needs to ensure that program spend is within budget and that negotiated rate spend volumes are maintained.
It needn’t be this difficult. The advent of expense management solutions can dramatically streamline processes for both travelers and back-office staff while controlling costs and providing deep visibility into employees’ spend.
This webinar, presented by Tnooz with Chrome River and US Bank, looks at some of the biggest challenges posed by both manual processes and archaic expense solutions, and how these challenges can be eliminated by modern expense management solutions.
Attend the webinar and learn:
Key challenges that business travelers are facing.
Problems that travel managers/back office deal with every day.
Benefits of travel and expense management solutions that address these challenges head on: traveler experience, financial and card administration, travel program administration, cost control and decision making.
Panelists for our WEBINAR are:
Ted Stavropoulos - director of partner channel development, Chrome River
Bradley Matthews - head of middle market product and marketing, US Bank Corporate Payment Systems
Martin Cowen – contributing editor and moderator, Tnooz
Kevin May – senior editor and producer, Tnooz
This WEBINAR took place on WEDNESDAY 3 MAY 2017.
Richard Horton, Head of Transport Development for Travis Perkins - Operationa...Global Business Events
Richard Horton, Head of Transport Development for Travis Perkins - Operational Efficiencies & Telematics. Richard discusses how to get the most out of Fleet Telematics.
Taming the Travel & Entertainment Expense Beast: Benchmarks & Best PracticesAshley Emery
Travel and entertainment—second only to payroll as the largest business expense—is becoming increasingly more difficult to control as companies expand across borders and grow through acquisitions. Discover how companies are leveraging technology in conjunction with procedural best practices to remove common T&E headaches including: the untimely submission of expense reports, lost receipts, inefficient processes and paperwork relative to reviewing and approving expense reports and ensuring adherence to company travel policies.
MDOT Commuter Choice on the Business Benefits of Expanding your Commuter Bene...CommuterChoiceMaryla
This webinar will provide guidance to employers on how to develop or enhance their commuter benefits program. Learn about: Commuter benefits advantages and benefits, assistance with the Maryland Commuter Tax Credit, strategies that encourage employee participation offerings, Assistance with program implementation, and on-going support.
Please visit: CommuterChoiceMaryland.com
Travel & Expense Management 2015: How to Establish a Successful T&E Policy an...Ashley Emery
As the second largest line item cost for most companies and organizations, travel and expense spending requires careful controls to maintain corporate policy and manage budgets. Each year, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) researches average costs for meals, lodging and incidental expenses in destinations throughout the 48 continental states. As a well-defined and well-researched guideline, the GSA per diem rate framework can be used by any organization to create a successful travel and expense management policy with greater control and visibility into T&E spend.
How Diversifying Your Shipping Strategy Can Drive Value for Your OrganizationGSO2015
Find out how adding a Regional Overnight Delivery Provider to Your Shipping Mix Will Improve Service for Customers and Lower Your Shipping Costs. You'll find that there are many great Regional Alternatives to UPS and FedEx.
Texas Pedestrian Safety Forum, July 12, 2018
When Your Urban Core Arrives | University Drive in College Station Presented by James Robertson, Ph.D., P.E., Lee Engineering
Texas Pedestrian Safety Forum, July 12, 2018
Presentation by Kevin Kokes, Principal Transportation Planner, North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG)
In 2009, the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) added a one-of-a-kind Visibility Research Laboratory to its collection
of world class research facilities. The laboratory is located in the Institute’s State Headquarters and Research Building in the Research Park at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. The laboratory features a 125-foot-long corridor that is used to test retroreflective materials and coatings, lights and other technologies designed to provide nighttime visibility for
highway drivers.
What is Truck Platooning?
Level 2 truck platooning extends radar and vehicle-to-vehicle, communications-based, cooperative-adaptive cruise control using precise automated lateral and longitudinal vehicle control to maintain a tight formation of vehicles with short following distances. A manually driven truck leads a platoon, allowing the driver(s) of the following truck(s) to disengage from driving tasks and monitor system performance. Level 1 truck platooning has demonstrated the potential for significant fuel savings, enhanced mobility and associated emissions reductions from platooning vehicles. Level 2 automation may increase these benefits while reducing driver workload and increasing safety.
The Transportation Revenue Estimator and Needs Determination System (TRENDS) model funded by the Texas Department of Transportation is designed to provide transportation planners, policy makers and the public with a tool to forecast transportation revenues and expenses based on a user-defined level of investment at both the state and local
level. The user, through interactive windows, can control a number of variables related to assumptions regarding statewide transportation needs, population growth rates, fuel efficiency,
federal reimbursement rates, inflation rates, taxes, fees and other elements. The output is a set of tables and graphs showing a forecast of revenues, expenditures and fund balances for each year of the analysis period based on the
user-defined assumptions. The TRENDS model also includes a local option sub-model for each of Texas’ 25 Metropolitan Planning Organizations. Through the local option model the user can analyze changes in local revenues by creating
or adjusting a local fuel tax, local vehicle miles traveled tax, local vehicle registration fee or the local fuel efficiency rates.
The Travel Forecasting Program at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) supports and assists public agencies in the development, implementation and application of
current and emerging technologies in travel demand forecasting.
The purpose of travel forecasting is to help transportation
decision makers, at the local and state levels, improve the overall function of the transportation system. Program staff members accomplish this by developing travel models that predict future transportation patterns based on many variables. The variables used by program staff include comprehensive travel survey data, U.S. Census data, current and projected socio-demographic data, existing and projected transportation system data, and current traffic data.
The Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) Transportation Planning Program conducts research on travel surveys, travel behavior and related data collection methods to support travel models, policy, and air quality analyses. Program researchers have expertise in travel data collection methods and technologies; survey design and sampling, data analysis and interpretation; demographic data preparation for modeling; and corridor management and preservation.
The Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) Transit
Mobility Program provides research and technology transfer expertise in all aspects of public transportation planning, management and operations. Program researchers bring a combination of direct operational skills in all bus and rail modes and nationwide research experience with metropolitan, urban and rural transit systems. Research projects result in practical, actionable recommendations for enhancing transit access, efficiency, effectiveness, safety and funding sustainability. Transit Mobility Program staff are adept at facilitating multi-agency groups in the development of shared transportation objectives, innovative strategies and coordinated services.
The TTI Center for Transportation Safety is home to a Realtime Technologies, Inc. (RTI) driving simulator that provides measurements of drivers’ responses to roadway situations, in-vehicle technologies, and driving-related tasks. RTI’s
SimCreator® and SimVista® software tools provide a library of different roadway cross-sections and interchanges, as well as a variety of roadway objects, buildings, and ambient traffic. In addition, custom roadway tiles can be programmed to match a specific roadway segment. This allows for in-house development of a wide range of rural and urban roadway scenarios, making it possible to inexpensively test multiple variations and placements of roadway devices or in-vehicle
signals and displays. Using the driving simulator, researchers can test a wider variety of roadway geometries and traffic conditions than are typically possible in a test-track study or fiscally practical in a field study.
The Texas A&M Transportation Institute’s (TTI) Sediment and
Erosion Control Laboratory (SEC Lab) provides the transportation industry with a research and performance
evaluation program for roadside environmental management. Research at the SEC Lab includes stormwater quality improvement, erosion and sediment control, and vegetation
establishment and management.
The Texas A&M University System is creating a new paradigm for the future of applied research, technology development and education. The 2,000 acre RELLIS Campus is conveniently located just 8 miles/15 minutes from Texas A&M University’s main campus. This location has long been a place where Texas A&M has conducted world-class research, technology development and workforce training in areas such as vehicle safety, traffic engineering, law enforcement training, biological materials processing, robotics and unmanned aerial systems.
Freight and passenger rail is a critical component of our nation’s
transportation system. Texas A&M Transportation Institute’s
(TTI) Multimodal Freight Transportation Programs Group
remains active in exploring the future of rail through a variety
of research activities.
Public scrutiny and agency accountability are at an all-time
high. Agencies are looking for a better understanding of the issues that are important to their customers. In an era of strained financial resources, it is necessary to order priorities that are important to the people that support the transportation system through taxes and fees. The Public Engagement Planning (PEP) program at the Texas A&M Transportation
Institute (TTI) provides research innovations and coordinated support to sponsors in the areas of public engagement planning and public opinion research.
The Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) was asked by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to assist in the application and refinement of prior research to accomplish some key goals during the reconstruction of the I-35 corridor from Hillsboro to Salado (90 miles total). Currently, TxDOT is conducting 10 construction projects along this corridor. More than 30 million drivers, including travelers, shippers and intercity commuters, use the corridor each year.
Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) include a broad range of services and technology solutions that provide and manage information to improve the safety, efficiency and performance of our transportation network.
Researchers design and implement experiments with human subjects (including field and simulator studies) and survey subjects to identify driver safety issues, such as those related to traffic control devices, distraction and fatigue. TTI’s experimental psychologists and industrial engineers have conducted numerous studies related to driver response to roadway geometric design; visibility and driver comprehension of traffic control devices; driver distraction; and automotive adaptive equipment for disabled drivers, older drivers and short-statured drivers.
The Human Factors Program is housed within the Center
for Transportation Safety at the Texas A&M Transportation
Institute (TTI). The goal of the program is to conduct basic and
applied research to measure driver performance and behavior
for varied driving situations, vehicle characteristics and roadway
environments. Researchers design and implement experiments with human subjects (including field and simulator studies) and survey subjects to identify driver safety issues, such as those related to traffic control devices, distraction and fatigue.
TTI’s experimental psychologists and industrial engineers have
conducted numerous studies related to driver response to
roadway geometric design; visibility and driver comprehension
of traffic control devices; driver distraction; and automotive
adaptive equipment for disabled drivers, older drivers and
short-statured drivers.
For more than three decades, the Texas A&M Transportation
Institute (TTI) has been actively involved in the development
and improvement of the Texas Airport System. TTI’s contributions include activities related to planning and programming of airport projects, airport maintenance, and aviation education. TTI researchers have provided valuable guidance on a variety of issues to the Aviation Division at the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) and to small and large airports across the state, including the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport and small airports such as Bryan’s Coulter Field.
zkStudyClub - Reef: Fast Succinct Non-Interactive Zero-Knowledge Regex ProofsAlex Pruden
This paper presents Reef, a system for generating publicly verifiable succinct non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs that a committed document matches or does not match a regular expression. We describe applications such as proving the strength of passwords, the provenance of email despite redactions, the validity of oblivious DNS queries, and the existence of mutations in DNA. Reef supports the Perl Compatible Regular Expression syntax, including wildcards, alternation, ranges, capture groups, Kleene star, negations, and lookarounds. Reef introduces a new type of automata, Skipping Alternating Finite Automata (SAFA), that skips irrelevant parts of a document when producing proofs without undermining soundness, and instantiates SAFA with a lookup argument. Our experimental evaluation confirms that Reef can generate proofs for documents with 32M characters; the proofs are small and cheap to verify (under a second).
Paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/1886
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
Dr. Sean Tan, Head of Data Science, Changi Airport Group
Discover how Changi Airport Group (CAG) leverages graph technologies and generative AI to revolutionize their search capabilities. This session delves into the unique search needs of CAG’s diverse passengers and customers, showcasing how graph data structures enhance the accuracy and relevance of AI-generated search results, mitigating the risk of “hallucinations” and improving the overall customer journey.
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
GraphSummit Singapore | The Art of the Possible with Graph - Q2 2024Neo4j
Neha Bajwa, Vice President of Product Marketing, Neo4j
Join us as we explore breakthrough innovations enabled by interconnected data and AI. Discover firsthand how organizations use relationships in data to uncover contextual insights and solve our most pressing challenges – from optimizing supply chains, detecting fraud, and improving customer experiences to accelerating drug discoveries.
Sudheer Mechineni, Head of Application Frameworks, Standard Chartered Bank
Discover how Standard Chartered Bank harnessed the power of Neo4j to transform complex data access challenges into a dynamic, scalable graph database solution. This keynote will cover their journey from initial adoption to deploying a fully automated, enterprise-grade causal cluster, highlighting key strategies for modelling organisational changes and ensuring robust disaster recovery. Learn how these innovations have not only enhanced Standard Chartered Bank’s data infrastructure but also positioned them as pioneers in the banking sector’s adoption of graph technology.
Alt. GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using ...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Maruthi Prithivirajan, Head of ASEAN & IN Solution Architecture, Neo4j
Get an inside look at the latest Neo4j innovations that enable relationship-driven intelligence at scale. Learn more about the newest cloud integrations and product enhancements that make Neo4j an essential choice for developers building apps with interconnected data and generative AI.
Climate Impact of Software Testing at Nordic Testing DaysKari Kakkonen
My slides at Nordic Testing Days 6.6.2024
Climate impact / sustainability of software testing discussed on the talk. ICT and testing must carry their part of global responsibility to help with the climat warming. We can minimize the carbon footprint but we can also have a carbon handprint, a positive impact on the climate. Quality characteristics can be added with sustainability, and then measured continuously. Test environments can be used less, and in smaller scale and on demand. Test techniques can be used in optimizing or minimizing number of tests. Test automation can be used to speed up testing.
Observability Concepts EVERY Developer Should Know -- DeveloperWeek Europe.pdfPaige Cruz
Monitoring and observability aren’t traditionally found in software curriculums and many of us cobble this knowledge together from whatever vendor or ecosystem we were first introduced to and whatever is a part of your current company’s observability stack.
While the dev and ops silo continues to crumble….many organizations still relegate monitoring & observability as the purview of ops, infra and SRE teams. This is a mistake - achieving a highly observable system requires collaboration up and down the stack.
I, a former op, would like to extend an invitation to all application developers to join the observability party will share these foundational concepts to build on:
Integrating Automated Toll Discounts into a Real-time Ridesharing Program
1. Integrating Automated Toll Discounts into a
Real-time Ridesharing Program
95th Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board
January 13, 2016
Nick Wood, P.E.
2. Outline
• What is Dynamic Ridesharing?
• Past Ridesharing Efforts
• Description of Pilot in Austin, TX
• Results
• Key Takeaways
3. What is Dynamic Ridesharing?
Carpools that can occur instantaneously, with no fixed
schedule, enabling drivers and riders to share trips in
real-time. Drivers are not encouraged to make trips for
profit, but can be reimbursed for expenses.
4. Past Efforts
• TDM programs challenged by requirements to
record and submit activity for rewards
• SR 520 Pilot (2010-2011)
– Smartphone app facilitated payments, security
requirements hampered recruitment
• Santa Barbara, CA (2012)
– 755 downloaded app, only 31 users took 2+ trips
• Northern VA, I-95/395/495 (2013)
– Rapid changes in the app confused participants
– 900 users completed 250 trips
• Most pilots required substantial recruitment
5. Austin, TX Pilot
• Occurred during February – December 2014
• Partnerships between CTRMA (toll operator) and Carma
(rideshare and app vendor)
• Drivers and riders downloaded mobile app
• Operated on two regional toll facilities, where all lanes
were tolled
– HOV2 received 50% toll rebate, HOV3+ traveled toll-free
– Toll varied from $0.51 - $1.86 per gantry
– At most, trips crossed 4 gantries per facility
• Toll rebates shown directly on monthly TxTag statements
7. Mobile Application
• App advertised rides, recorded trips,
and transmitted payments
• Participants could either plug-in
schedules or search for active users
• Drivers could offer either free or
reimbursed rides
– Option of charging $0.20 per mile, up to
IRS limit
• Step-by-step process
– Users select “plan” or “start” trip
– Users select “driver” or “rider” mode
– Users confirmed end of trip
– E-mail sent confirming payment or
deposit
8. Process to Match and
Verify Toll Rebates
1. Vendor requests data,
provides TxTag IDs
2. Toll operator matches IDs to
txns in database
3. Operator provides vendor
with transaction data
4. Vendor stores data
5. Vendor matches their trip
data to operator’s txns using
time of txn
6. Vendor provides report to
operator to process rebates
Vendor Toll Operator
9. Monthly Results
*Figures for February are reflective of a 2/18/2014 start date
During 10.5-month pilot, 95 unique drivers took a total of 2,213 trips
10. Number of Trips per Driver
Drivers took a median of 7 trips, 254 trips were taken from a single driver
11. Trips by Rebate Amount
Toll Posted Number of Trips
Less than $0.50 81
$0.50–$0.99 1,226
$1.00–$1.49 611
$1.50–$1.99 174
$2.00–$2.49 85
$2.50–$2.99 31
Over $3.00 3
• 81% of trips from
HOV2 (50% off)
• One trip had 8 people
• Highest rebate was
$4.37 for single trip
• Riders paid total of
$1,388.50 to drivers
(not to toll operator)
• Vendor received 15%
admin fee from rider
payment
12. Longitudinal Trip Frequency
• Did users just
download app,
use it, and stop?
• Results are mixed
• Most joined early
during pilot
• Infrequent trips
common
• Median time was
162 days between
first and last trip
13. Key Takeaways
• Pilot extended during first six months of 2015 to most
TxDOT-operated toll facilities in Austin region
– Only in-app credits provided, no posting on TxTag statements
– Longer toll roads led to greater incentives
– Total monthly trips increased, on average, by 50%
• Presence and availability of tech does not automatically
lead to success
– Legacy toll systems delay of up to 10 days for posting rebates
– Users only saw rebates on monthly statements
• Fewer participants than anticipated
– Small amount of incentive shown per trip may not have been enough
– Fuel prices decreased from $3.12 to $2.07/gallon
14. Key Takeaways, cont…
• Other research shown that structural changes in value of
rebate does not lead to behavior change
• However, future research could show long-term benefits
– One driver received $300+ in toll rebates in 2014
– Extended 2015 pilot had one driver with $500+ toll credits during
first six months
– Pilot did not easily show longitudinal, or annual savings
– Future app could show and track progress, similar to fitness
programs
• Program coordinators need to consider on-going problems
with toll transaction processing
– TxDOT switched vendors during middle of 2014, caused many
users to see erroneous bills
– Other states and agencies have had similar problems
15. For more information:
• This forthcoming TRR paper, in addition to the
other TRB paper below, provide a good
summary of the pilot
Paper 16-0596 “Recruiting Carpoolers: Dynamic
Ridesharing with Incentives in Central Texas”
Authored by G. Griffin, G. Stoeltje, N. Jones, N. Wood, and C.
Simek
16. Integrating Automated Toll Discounts into a
Real-time Ridesharing Program
Nick Wood, P.E.
nickwood@tamu.edu