The Affinity Project

The Affinity Project, so called for the natural inclination towards a relationship of communication, allows for the dissemination of current information to all parties involved in a natural way. The Affinity Project represents the first attempt to gather like-minded individuals, associations, municipal, provincial, and federal authorities together to create neighbourhood and municipal microsimulation models to ensure complete coverage of transportation related information.

Municipal Microsimulation Modelling (M3) is the impetus for this project and has only recently come to light in the transportation field. Education of planning and engineering professionals on the merits of a state-of-the-art program of this nature is a spin-off of this project.

Many benefits can be achieved by municipalities that choose to endorse the Affinity Project. Greater efficiency in data storage, reduced transportation planning costs, greater availability for future planning alternatives, and significant cost savings during the model creation phase of the project are some of the benefits. Call our office for a presentation on all of the benefits that may affect your jurisdiction.

Next Presentation

Adept Transportation Solutions will be presenting the Affinity Project at a CAN meeting soon.

Project Summary

The Affinity Project is a complete process of creating a municipal microsimulation model for planning and analysis purposes. Here is a snapshot of the simulation model:

Our proposal targets the neighbourhoods and municipalities of Vancouver Island as a starting point for the implementation of the project. Each area would have its own existing conditions transportation model. Each model will be used by city staff to plan for development and changes due to growth as well as their routine upgrades.

This will create not only new communication paths between interested groups and the proper authorities, but also trigger efficient pathways for existing communication routes. Currently the approval process could be improved where concurrent projects (within a year or two of one another) can be defined when considering traffic impact studies. Currently, these adjacent projects may compete for infrastructure that is not reflected in the analysis for approval.

The transportation model gets updated every time a project is approved by the developer's consultant. Current information is used for each development, and the public can understand the impacts of any development within the municipal area with the viewer friendly animations. The simulations show traffic tie-ups, congestion, pedestrians crossing streets, and many other ordinary actions of drivers, making it a useful tool for public presentation purposes.

Project Scope

This project is monumental in size, providing training to students interested in aspects of civil engineering, and can be implemented across the nation at the municipal or neighbourhood level. This project involves data collection, professional training, policy implementation, data summaries, historical research, report writing, and community presentations along with a host of related activities.

Possibilities

Not only a valid communication device and process, but also an impetus for revitalization of the downtown core's transportation systems. The excitement of public involvement in possible future plans can draw attention to potential companies and economic influences. With the flexibility of creating future plans easily for municipal staff, it becomes an integral tool for forecasting with other regional transportation models such as EMME/2, TModel2 and VISUM which cast analysis results across municipalities.

Funding

Funding for this project is currently being explored with a number of interested parties.

Others Are Doing This Too

Take a look at some of the projects that other agencies have developed to work together, and pay special attention to the Federal Transportation Administration from the United States; they have five pilot projects that empower the public regarding transportation issues. Here are the web links so you can see for yourself:

The City of Calgary's Corporate Data Access and Marketing Project

Halifax Regional Municipality's State of the Region Address

Federal Transportation Administration's Community Empowerment Program

Who Benefits?

Check out this list of benefactors:

The City of Victoria: they get a traffic model for the entire municipality free of charge that is maintained by developers.

Developers: the traffic impact assessments will not cost any more to produce and may drop in price since existing conditions are already completed.

Students: they may perform many of the data collection duties, gathering much needed experience in the field, as well as be trained on the use of state-of-the-art software actually used in the area of transportation planning and engineering.

Capital Regional District: they gain valuable up to date information on the current performance of roadways and intersections throughout the entire city limits of Victoria which can be reflected in their Regional Models.

Federal Government of Canada: in light of recent emission spotlights, emission calculations can be used on the resulting model to determine a baseline for emission reductions. Future scenarios can be judged on how well it reduces tailpipe emissions.

The Ministry of Transportation: understanding the urban highway system through core downtown areas will result in better, safer decisions for the future.

Professional Transportation Community: always willing to try new ways of doing things better, the community at large will learn from this experience and it may foster similar projects across the country.

Neighbourhood Residential Associations: they gain valuable communication gateways that foster better relationships between the municipal authorities and the developers.

The Public: these people benefit not only from all of the above benefits, but also from knowing that concurrent projects will be analyzed with the understanding that all resources compete for vast amounts of transportation infrastructure, and analysis will be performed and readily shown in a manner in which they can understand it.