The 2016 MikeOnTraffic subscriber survey results are in! Here’s a chart of the top work issues in our field:
Three key areas standout from this year’s survey:
- Trip Generation
- Everyday work challenges (Business Issues and Time Management / Talent Management categories)
- Politics / Bureaucracy (which includes the Politics / bureaucracy and Dealing with Agencies categories)
It’s clear trip generation is the number one traffic engineering/planning issue for respondents this year. Here are some of the general trip generation themes from the survey:
- Adjusting trip generation numbers for multi-modal amenities near the development site.
- Internal capture rates for small multi-use developments.
- Trip generation rates to use in planning studies of large commercial or residential uses where the mix of uses hasn’t yet been determined.
- How will trip generation and traffic forecasting be impacted in the next 10 years and then the 10 years after that with all the technological changes coming?
- It is hard to fit certain projects into land use categories and get a fair trip generation calculation. Especially when we are applying it to calculate fees.
- Determining trip generation distribution.
These are valid concerns that I have written about in the past and will continue to write about. I encourage you to go to TripGeneration.org to download our latest dataset to help you do better analysis.
Much like last year, everyday work challenges are a theme again this year. This broad category includes time management, talent, staffing, training, and general business management. If you struggle with any of these more general work issues, check out my posts How I Tamed Chaos at Work and Top 15 Strategies for Building Focus.
Similarly, politics and working with agencies is a common theme that has re-appeared in this year’s survey. Simply put, as engineers, we will always experience some level of politics / bureaucracy in our positions. So the goal is to find strategies to deal with this. Check out my article on How the Right Recommendation May Be the Wrong Decision. I share my experience working in a political situation. And as always, I welcome my readers to share their experience and strategies with the community.
Thank you to those of you who responded to the survey! I look forward to continuing to serve you and making the 10th year of MikeOnTraffic our best year yet!
