Traffic Engineering & Studies

Services Provided: Traffic Forecasting, TransCAD Model Review, Project Management  

Insight led a team that provides project-level Traffic Forecasts to the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) Transportation Planning Division (TPD) office through their Limited Services Contract with NCDOT. 

For each traffic forecast work order, Insight reviewed the collected data and AADT conversion, provided guidance for the base year no-build estimate, reviewed the TransCAD model, reviewed and provided guidance for the future year no-build and build forecast, addressed comments, and led the delivery of the completed traffic forecast report. 

Thus far, Insight has provided forecasts for the following projects through the limited services contract.

• NCDOT STIP Project Number H193591 / R-5900, Pender County 
• NCDOT STIP Project Number H191454, Carteret County
• NCDOT STIP Project Number Y-5500GC, Alamance County

Services Provided: Traffic Operational Analysis, Demand Forecasting, PD&E Alternatives Screening

As part of a study concerning the replacement/conversion of the Jacksonville Skyway, an automated people mover, Insight is conducting traffic operations analysis and demand forecasting to support the alternatives analysis for the Skyway. Jacksonville hopes to adapt the existing Skyway monorail infrastructure to integrate with an existing Autonomous Vehicle (AV) pilot by converting the existing Skyway Infrastructure into an elevated roadway for AVs. However, before the project could be scoped, Jacksonville needed to know more about the transportation demand or transit ridership potential along the corridor to help define the scope of the Skyway rehabilitation and expansion phase (before a full Project Development & Environment (PD&E) phase). 

Insight is applying its expertise in traffic demand forecasting. Insight will model the impacts of changes in transportation technologies on street-level automobile delay through traffic operations analysis. The traffic analysis is being conducted in SYNCHRO and will include existing, no-build, and a few build scenarios.

As a result, the client will be able to clearly and rigorously identify the mobility trade-offs between different alternatives and appropriately scope further PD&E work.  

Services Provided: Traffic Forecast Data Analysis, Statistical Analysis

Insight is leading an effort for the Metropolitan Council to evaluate the accuracy and robustness of long-range traffic forecasts. This project builds on decades of traffic forecasting research and marks the third regional forecast accuracy assessment conducted in the Twin Cities, and the first to incorporate the methodological advancements from the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 934.

The objective of this work is to assess the reliability of past traffic forecasts, improve modeling procedures, and develop tools to better communicate forecast uncertainty to planners and decision-makers. The analysis will enhance both the Met Council’s and Minnesota Department of Transportation’s (MnDOT) understanding of how forecasted and actual traffic volumes have aligned over time, providing a critical foundation for future infrastructure planning. The key activities are described below: 

• Compiling a robust database of past traffic forecasts, traffic counts, and project metadata. Insight created an innovative ChatGPT- and Python-powered toolto extract key forecast data from over 450 MnDOT traffic reports—many of them lengthy and scanned—into a structured, tabular format.  
• Applying multiple statistical techniques—such as percent difference from forecast (PDFF), quantile regression, and longitudinal comparisons—to quantify forecast accuracy. This analysis will be compared against prior regional assessments to measure improvement over time. 
• Providing recommendations to improve both forecasting procedures and how forecast uncertainty is communicated. Insight will leverage quantile regression and user-focused visualization methods to support decisions under uncertainty and will suggest refinements to the Met Council’s travel demand model based on systematic errors identified in the forecast database.

This study provides the Met Council with a highly defensible and transparent record of forecast accuracy, strengthens the credibility of travel demand models in future decision-making, and equips planners with tools to explain and manage forecast uncertainty in public and interagency settings. Insight’s leadership in this project showcases its unmatched expertise in travel demand model evaluation and its ability to merge technical rigor with actionable, policy-relevant recommendations. The methodologies and tools developed will be scalable for use by MPOs and DOTs nationwide.