Transportation planning requires the use of modeling tools that can represent the diversity of travel and allow policy makers to anticipate the impacts of new or alternative transportation investments. The Houston-Galveston Area Council’s travel demand model was last validated in 2012.  H-GAC has collected and received data needed for its next  model validation, including: regional transit on-board origin-destination, traffic counts on over 10,000 road locations, and travel speed and traffic volumes at over 1,000 locations in our region. In conjunction with new data on freight deliveries, land use, population and employment data, we now have the opportunity to comprehensively update our travel analysis tools.

H-GAC has completed its receipt and analysis of consultant proposals to validate the transit mode choice and highway assignment components of its travel modeling tools. The consultant were required to demonstrate their ability to validate and implement required enhancements to our models utilizing the recently collected data.

H-GAC issued a Request for Proposals, September 14, 2018 to seek vendors with the appropriate qualifications, expertise, knowledge, and past performance with similar projects. Evaluations were scored on capabilities, approach, management and past performances from the submitted proposals. H-GAC received two qualified proposals. The ranking of the proposals are:

1. Cambridge Systematics, Inc.

2. Resource System Group

Federal (TxDOT) - $500,000

Yes

Request authorization to contract with Cambridge Systematics, Inc. to validate the transit mode choice and highway assignment components of H-GAC's travel demand model, amount not to exceed $500,000. (Staff Contact: Alan Clark)