Top Seven Highlights of the new ITE Trip Generation Manual

By Bryant Ficek, PE, PTOE

The 10^th edition of the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Trip Generation Manual is expected to be released in September. Based on information from the ITE Annual Meeting we attended in Toronto along with our separate discussions with ITE, here the top seven highlights of the new manual:

1. Now Electronic. The new bundle can be purchased as hard copy, electronic, or cloud-based.
2. Old Data Removed. Pre-1980 studies have been removed from the compilations, although ITE maintains the removal has little impact on the overall rates. Several old land uses, such as DVD/Video rental store, have also been removed.
3. New Data Added. About 1,700 new sites have greatly expanded the database, including new land use categories such as off-campus student housing, charter school, fast casual restaurant, and marijuana retail store. [Check out our free Trip Generation data]
4. Filterable. The trip generation data will have filtering capabilities including setting (urban, suburban, rural), region/geography, age of data, development size, and trip type (person or vehicle). Note, however, that the ITE official rate will not be a filtered number. This is to protect those public agencies that use the ITE rates as official policy.
5. Person Trips. About 400 sites have person-trip data available, allowing these trips to be distributed amongst vehicles, transit, bicycles, and walking.
6. Multiple Variables. Some land uses will now be able to have its trip generation determined by multiple variables rather than just one (like building square footage only).
7. More Expensive. ITE intends the electronic version to be one license per one user, but is offering substantial discounts for multiple copies. This may have been the biggest discussion item at the annual meeting and we talked with the ITE personnel about it as well. We’ll see if there are any changes to the pay structure with its release. If you have more than one copy of the current manual and multiple traffic engineers using it, you might need to pay more this year compared to previous years.

We, Spack Consulting, is proud to be the number one private firm contributor to ITE for their manual update. Not to toot our own horn too much, but some land use categories will be solely based on information we collected (see the raw data here). This is a great direction for ITE to take the manual and we’re excited for its upcoming release.

Interested in collecting trip generation data? We have a limited number of traffic video recorders available to collect data.  You record the video, we’ll count it and share it as part of our free Trip Generation data.

This is a win – win scenario.  You get to use one of our COUNTcam 2 video recorders to collect traffic video for a project, and we will count the video for free.  In exchange, your data is shared as part of our free Trip Generation report. So, your data will also help other engineers. Contact us for more details on how to use a COUNTcam 2 for your traffic counts. Contact us at sales@countingcars.com. Note: some restrictions apply. COUNTcam 2 supplies are limited.