You've found the "TF Resource" -- the Travel Forecasting Resource website, a collection of best practices for travel demand forecasting and travel survey methods.
This website serves as a community resource for travel forecasting research and practice. We welcome your participation!
This community is comprised of volunteers, many of whom are affiliated with the Transportation Research Board's Standing Committee (AEP50) on Transportation Demand Forecasting's Subcommittee for Travel Forecasting Resources.
TF Resource is a collection of pages written in Markdown plain-text format, stored on Github.com. Github uses a "pull request" workflow, which means that you don't need anyone's permission to suggest whatever changes you see fit! Rather, you make changes to your own copy of a page, and then you request that those changes be pulled into the site by our team of volunteers.
You must create a free account on GitHub in order to make changes to the site.
This removes the need for complicated permissions management or gatekeeping on the site, while still allowing the TFResource editors to prevent spam or incomplete/incorrect changes. After review, TFResource volunteers may then either approve/merge the edits or suggest additional changes.
- For more info on getting started, see Contributing
Dispute resolution will be handled, if necessary, by the TRB AEP50 Subcommittee on Travel Forecasting Resources ("the committee").
The committee has developed and approved the following policies and procedures. Any necessary additions or updates will be developed and approved by the same committee. The information on the TFResource is divided into topic areas selected by the committee. Future topics will be considered as content becomes available and contributions are made to the site. If a topic you really care about is not currently found, please follow the instructions above and in the Developer Instructions to submit your contribution.
This project came about due to a TRB research project designed to examine the state-of-the-practice in metropolitan travel forecasting. In the final report, Metropolitan Travel Forecasting: Current Practice and Future Direction, the committee identified many recommendations to improve travel demand forecasting, including: A national travel forecasting handbook be developed and kept current to provide salient information to those practicing travel demand forecasting; This suggestion was taken up by the forecasting community and this TFResource will be that handbook.
TRB is serving as the “secretariat” for the site. This means providing staffing, support to the curators and contributors, and contracting with the experts needed to develop the site. A TRB committee was also appointed to provide the technical expertise to develop the website.
In addition to the volunteers, the administrators are responsible for the general organization, functionality and operation of the site itself. If you have suggestions on how to improve the TFResource functionality, please let the administrators know.
Wikipedia has changed the way we conduct research, find those pesky facts, and start to learn a topic. Like Wikipedia, the TFResource relies on community contributors to develop and update articles. TFResource also relies on editors within the community with subject matter expertise to assist with curating articles. Traditionally, transport modelers have contributed to TFResource, but experts from related fields are welcome to contribute as well.
We have benefited from the many community-based webpages that have been developed before ours. The references below were used in all aspects of the website development.
- Wikipedia Introduction to policies and guidelines, Five Pillars, Policies and Guidelines, List of Policies, List of Guidelines, WikiProject Council/Guide, WikiProject Council/Directory, To-do List, web resources examined 9/9/2010 and later dates
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- The Wikipedia review, wikipediareview.com, general information on governance and posting issues on Wikipedia
- Firstmonday, Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet, firstmonday.org, Vol. 15, Number 3, March 1, 2010, Identifying and Understanding the problems of Wikipedia’s peer governance: The case of inclusionists versus deletionists, Vasilis Kostakis
- The Apache software Foundation, www.apache.org, How the ASF works, www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html, 9/9/2010
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