The problem

Source: 'Inside the black box' report

• Transport models were designed to support growth in car ownership and reduce journey times (Boyce and Williams, 2015)

• 21^st^ Century priorities are very different

  • Climate science, air pollution and health force a shift in focus
  • The concepts of 'participatory democracy' and 'citizen science' mean there is a need for collaborative solutions

The solution

New technologies mean that open access transport models are possible

Source: A/B Street, free, open source, gamified transport planning software github.com/dabreegster/abstreet

Open Source Transport Tools

Source: Lovelace (2021), see github.com/Robinlovelace/open-gat

From open source to open access

• Transport models represent a leverage point in transport systems
• New paper, Lovelace et al (2020) describes the emergence and possibilities for 'open access models'

What is science?

Transport planning software

Transport modelling software products are a vital component of modern transport planning and research.

• They generate the evidence base on which strategic investments are made and, furthermore,
• provide a powerful mechanism for researching alternative futures.

It would not be an overstatement to say that software determines the range of futures that are visible to policymakers. This makes status of transport modelling software and how it may evolve in the future important questions.

What will transport software look like? What will their capabilities be? And who will control? Answers to each of these questions will affect the future of transport systems.

• Premise: transport planning/modelling software used in practice will become is becoming increasingly data-driven, modular and open.

The four stage model (left)

• Impacts the current software landscape

• Dominated by a few proprietary products

• Limited support community online

• High degree of lock-in

• Limited cross-department collaboration

Existing products

User support

Getting help is vital for leaning/improving software

"10-Hour Service Pack $2,000" (source: caliper.com/tcprice.htm)

Online communities

• gis.stackexchange.com has 21,314 questions

• r-sig-geo has 1000s of posts

• RStudio's Discourse community has 65,000+ posts already!

• No transport equivalent (e.g. earthscience.stackexchange.com is in beta)

• Potential for a Discourse forum or similar: transport is not (just) GIS

Best way to get support is peer-to-peer:

Source: https://community.rstudio.com/about

A few prices

Source: google.com/search?q=transcad+price

Is already here I

• Example: the Propensity to Cycle Tool (PCT.bike) (Lovelace et al. 2017)

How is data science used in the PCT?

• It's all reproducible, e.g.:
• Find commuting desire lines in West Yorkshire between 1 and 3 km long in which more people drive than cycle:

# Set-up, after installing R and checking out www.pct.bike:
u = "https://github.com/ITSLeeds/TDS/releases/download/0.1/desire_lines.geojson"
library(dplyr)
library(sf)
desire_lines = read_sf(u)

Visualising data

A fundamental part of data science is being able to understand your data.

That requires visualisation, R is great for that:

plot(desire_lines)

library(tmap)
tm_shape(desire_lines) + tm_lines("all")

Processing data with code

• Now we have data in our computer, and verified it works, we can use it

• Which places are most car dependent?

car_dependent_routes = desire_lines %>% 
  mutate(percent_drive = car_driver / all * 100) %>% 
  filter(rf_dist_km < 3 & rf_dist_km > 1)

Checking the results:

b = c(0, 25, 50, 75)
tm_shape(car_dependent_routes) +
  tm_lines(col = "percent_drive", lwd = "all", scale = 5, breaks = b, palette = "-inferno")

Is already here II

The ActDev project:

• A/B Street - R integration, see https://github.com/a-b-street/abstr

Live demo

Get involved

• Support open source solutions indirectly

  • Sign-up to platforms for sharing and collaborating on open source projects, such as https://github.com/
  • Preferentially use, cite and endorse open access and open source solutions
  • Find the open source tool best suited to your needs and communicate constructively with the developers
  • Communicate ways to improve open source solutions, e.g. by commenting on 'issue trackers' on forums such as GitHub

• Download, install and play with open source software

  • R/RStudio, great for data analysis but also interactive visualisation and, increasingly, transport planning workflows
  • Have a play with open access transport tools such as A/B Street and the PCT, which can run on your computer or in the browser

References

Boyce, D.E., Williams, H.C.W.L., 2015. Forecasting Urban Travel: Past, Present and Future. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Beimborn, E., Kennedy, R., 1996. Inside the Blackbox: Making Transportation Models Work for Livable Communities. Citizens for a Better Environment.

Lovelace, R., Parkin, J., Cohen, T., 2020. Open access transport models: A leverage point in sustainable transport planning. Transport Policy 97, 47–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2020.06.015

Thanks

Contact me at r. lovelace at leeds ac dot uk (email), @robinlovelace

Check-out links to my work at robinlovelace.net

Thanks to everyone building a open and collaborative communities

Thanks to the University of Leeds and the Institute for Transport Studies