What is GIS-T?
Beyond the State DOTs
Bruce Spear
Federal Highway Administration
Washington, DC
Current GIS Use in
Transportation Agencies
• State DOTs
– Over 95% have some operational GIS
capability
– Most GIS applications focus on facility
management functions
– Most GIS applications limited to data
visualization
– Limited applications involving spatial or
network analysis
Current GIS Use in Transportation
Agencies (continued)
• Metropolitan Planning Organizations
– Over 50% have some operational GIS
capability
– GIS initially used for public presentations
– Growing GIS use in preparing data for
transportation planning models
• Land Use
• Demographics & Employment
Current GIS Use in Transportation
Agencies (continued)
• Public Transit Agencies
– Under 20% have operational GIS capability
– Few identified GIS applications
• Transportation Management Centers
– GIS used principally for visualization and
public dissemination.
– Very limited use of ITS data in operational
and planning analyses.
Barriers to GIS Use in
Transportation Agencies
• Benefits not well articulated
• High costs for geo-spatial data
development or conversion
• Competing non-GIS “legacy tools”
(e.g., transportation planning models)
• Different “business application”
requirements
Barriers to Data Sharing Among
Transportation Agencies
•
•
•
•
Benefits not well articulated
No standard feature / attribute definitions
Different accuracy / detail requirements
Different application requirements for
network database
• Incompatible formats for network data
among “legacy tools”
So why bother?
• Atlanta “Benefits and Burdens” Study
– Develop measures for EJ
– Politically sensitive, significant impact on
new transportation projects in Atlanta
– Used GIS to examine distribute of impacts
geographically, by demographic group
– Difficult to integrate key data maintained by
different agencies: GDOT, ARC, MARTA
Promising Trends
• Some GIS software vendors addressing
transportation business applications
– ESRI – UNETRAN
– Caliper – TransCAD
• Federal regulations putting increased
emphasis on location specificity
– HPMS reporting
– Environmental Justice
– Air Quality Conformity
Promising Trends (cont.)
• New transportation planning models
require more accurate location data
– NYMTC Best Practices Model
– TRANSIMS
• Geo-spatial data becoming more
accurate and accessible
– GPS
– Remote imagery
– Interagency data sharing
Probable Future
• GIS use in transportation agencies will
grow, principally as an “end user” tool.
• Increasing pressure to make georeferenced transportation data
accessible to the public.
• Data sharing among agencies will
increase as barriers are overcome.
• Increased reliance on outside “experts”
for more complex GIS analyses.