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is sometimes used with consultants providing on- site assistance in the development and use of new travel demand models. The mentoring approach appears to be used less today than it was in the past. Medicine and other fields use internships and fellowships as part of the training process. These methods may not work well with travel forecasting, because it would be difficult to find universities, agencies, or consulting firms where an indi- vidual could be exposed to all the skill sets noted previ- ously. Contract training is another possible approach. Contract training involves one or two experts providing on- site training at an agency or consulting firm for a few weeks. The Oregon Department of Transportation has used this approach. ⢠The executive Masters of Business Administration (MBA) model may provide the best approach. Many of the executive MBA programs use distance- based learn- ing techniques. Using this approach, most of the work is done by students remotely, with participants meeting once a month on campus for 4 or 5 days. The on- campus sessions, which are typically scheduled for Thursday through Sunday, provide extensive interaction with fac- ulty and other students. This approach could be used with travel modeling. There are only a few universities that have the range of expertise needed to address all of the topics noted previously, however. This model may also not be feasible without a significant investment of resources to develop and maintain the program. Sup- porting the tuition and travel for public- sector partici- pants, who would be the major target group, may also be a significant issue. A source of funding for this type of program would be necessary. The program would also have to establish creditability with public- sector man- agers, because they would need to authorize agency staff to attend and to be absent from work. These issues may limit the viability of this approach. ⢠Training and staff development in travel forecast- ing appear to be low priorities at some agencies. Staffs do not always see the need for training, and those agen- cies that do support training often do not have funding available for staff development. It is difficult to advance the state of the practice without additional training and staff development. Staff at MPOs and other agencies must have the skills to use the new models and tech- niques or the state of the practice will not change. ⢠Many speakers at this conference have suggested that the four- step model does not address the questions being asked by policy makers and other groups related to economic competitiveness, market accessibility, sustain- ability, and equitability. If modelers cannot answer these and other related questions, they will not be able to con- tribute constructively to the public policy debate on criti- cal transportation issues. It would be a tragedy if advanced models of all types are available, but are not used because of lack of enough individuals with the skills needed to operate the models, tools, and techniques. Training is crit- ical to ensure that this problem does not happen. TRAFFIC FORECASTING IN A VISIONING WORKSHOP SETTING Donald Hubbard Donald Hubbard discussed the use of travel forecasting methods in public workshops. He described the possible advantages of this approach and summarized two vision- ing workshops in California that used this technique. A paper on this topic is provided in Volume 2.2 The fol- lowing points were covered in his presentation. ⢠The basic premise with using travel models in pub- lic workshops is that a good travel forecasting model is one that leads to good decisions. Good decisions may come from complex models, as well as from simple mod- els that provide results quicker. Travel models are typi- cally used in a private, unhurried setting. Modelers typically work on computers in their own office. This environment provides ample time to analyze and scruti- nize the inputs and outputs, make adjustments, and rerun the models as needed. Travel models provide a rich assortment of outputs. ⢠Using travel models in a public workshop provides a much different work environment. Using traffic forecast- ing models in a workshop setting may be considered for a number of reasons. Visioning workshops are an effective technique to help create a consensus on a proj ect or pro- gram. Workshops are also a democratic and legitimate method to obtain public involvement in public decisions. ⢠The impact of land use and development on the transportation system is not always considered in the decision- making process. Visioning workshops are fre- quently used with land use planning. Decisions in these settings have a major impact on the transportation sys- tem. Traffic forecasters need to participate in these work- shops so that a consensus forms around a workable plan, rather than a plan that does not work from a trans- portation standpoint. At least two negative consequences may result if a consensus is reached around an unwork- able plan. First, the public participating in the workshop may get angry and may feel they have been betrayed if an agency cannot implement the plan. Second, the public agency may be forced into a position of trying to imple- ment an unworkable plan. ⢠The only way to ensure that an unworkable con- sensus does not emerge from a visioning workshop is to have modelers participating in the session and to have 43EDUCATION AND OUTREACH 2 See Hubbard, D. Traffic Forecasting in a Visioning Workshop Setting. Volume 2, pp. 124â126.
