RECOMMENDATIONS FOR NATIONAL DATA. WORKSHOP REPORT. MID-YEAR MEETING OF THE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION DATA AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS, WASHINGTON, D.C., OCTOBER 24-25, 1989

This workshop considered five markets as follows: urban and suburban, rural, intercity passenger, intercity freight, and international. The strategic policy issues, data gaps, and conclusions and recommendations are organized with respect to these markets. Among the conclusions and recommendations are the following: Urban - encourage urban boundary consistency for metropolitan areas between data bases; uniform measures of congestion should be developed; HPMS should include some coding to allow identification of sub-area geography; develop means within HPMS for measuring trip length; the UMTA Section 15 data base should be expanded to obtain condition data on fixed plant. Rural - an aggregate measure of local road needs, which is not captured in HPMS, is needed; for short-line railroads, some measure of the abandonment impact on local roads and the agricultural economy is required. Intercity Passenger - there is a lack of data on longer trips in all modes; there is a need for information on intercity buses and rural bus service including financial and flow data. Intercity Freight - there is a lack of commodity O-D data across modes; there is a need for better truck safety data by truck configuration, and a way to relate accident data to exposure data. International - better data and analysis on international flows should be obtained. Other - (1) Relative to all modes and markets, GIS provides the mechanism to coordinate data bases on a common basis, especially as related to networks and flows; and (2) There should be a re-evaluation of partnerships in data collection at three levels--between federal agencies, between federal, state, and local agencies, and between the public and private sectors.