I’ve received several emails from ITE explaining a grant they are offering for collecting trip generation. They are offering up to five grants at $1,000 each to student groups to collect trip generation data for them. If you’re part of a student group looking to raise $1,000, check out the Request for Proposal. Proposals are due January 23rd (which is unfortunate since many colleges are between semesters until the end of January).
Producing the Trip Generation Manual is arguably the single most important thing ITE does and I am very supportive of this work. I believe Traffic Data Inc is a top five contributor of trip generation data to ITE over the last decade.
As regular readers of my blog know, there are a few things about ITE I am concerned about. The Trip Generation Manual is certainly near the top of the list (read here, here, and here).
According to the latest tax return (2011) for ITE, they claimed $1,553, 203 in revenue for publications against an expense of $595,066. Tom Brahms himself has told me the Trip Generation Manual is the biggest publication they have and they are financially dependent on it. I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume a few hundred thousand out of ITE’s million dollars in profit is coming from selling the Manual. And all they can afford to invest in the actual data for the Manual is $5,000? At a minimum, 25% of the profits from the Manual should be reinvested in adding data.
