Airport Model Improvements: Employees

[DavidOry]

While we may not make any improvements to the representation of airport employees, I'm creating this discussion to log ideas that we may want to consider if we do make targeted improvements. The strategy would be to intervene in the resident passenger component with calibration adjustments aimed at aligning the outcomes with data observed from the airport survey. Brainstorming ideas:

• Adjust the employment numbers in the TAZ data to ensure that they align with the number of employees the airport expects on a typical weekday.
• Adjust the usual workplace location choice model to align home locations of airport employees with observed data.
• After the usual workplace location choice model is executed, identify workers in a post-processing step as airport employees. This flag can then be used in downstream steps.
• With the airport employee flag, calibrate the work tour time-of-day model to align the time of day pattern with observed data.
• With the airport employee flag, calibrate the tour and trip mode choice models to align the time of day pattern with observed data.
• With the airport employee flag, modify the parking location choice model outcomes to align with observed data.

[rickcurry]

@bhargavasana

[bhargavasana]

Above ideas sounds great to me. I would support implementing as much as possible in the time we have.

[shannoncrooks]

That’s a solid framework for improving airport employee modeling. Flagging airport workers after the workplace location choice step sounds especially useful, since it allows for targeted calibration in time-of-day, mode choice, and parking models without disrupting the rest of the system.

It might also be worth considering whether seasonal variations or peak travel periods affect employee schedules and mode choices — incorporating that could make the calibration even more accurate.

[rickcurry]

While I would agree regarding that last statement, this information is not readily available from SDIA. Note that there are over 300 employers who operate on the SDIA grounds. The airport captures some information via security badge swipes at secure locations but they do not analyze the data for this type of purpose.