Chad Baker (California Department of Transportation)
Chad Baker has been the Statewide Model Branch Chief for Caltrans since 2009. In this capacity, he is responsible for all aspects of the model including quality control, operation, scenario development, post-processing and reporting. In his role as Branch Chief, he provides technical reviews and reports for various planning efforts such as travel surveys, regional demand modeling, freight modeling and passenger rail modeling. Prior to his current engagement, he has worked for the Department performing design, project study, programming and macro and microsimulation work.
Prior to working for Caltrans, Mr. Baker worked for a private engineering firm doing design, construction and open channel flow simulation work. Mr. Baker graduated from the University of California at Davis with both a Bachelors and a Masters degree in Civil Engineering. Mr. Baker is an active participant with the Transportation Research Board as the Chair for NCFRP Project 38, Improving Freight System Performance in Metropolitan Areas, as well as other panels and is a member of the technical expert panel for SHRP2 Project C10B.
Jim Benson (Texas Transportation Institute)
Dr. Benson has more than 40 years experience in transportation planning and engineering. During his 35+ years with TTI, his research has focused in the areas of transportation planning and travel forecasting. He has served as Principal Investigator or Study Director for numerous projects in these areas. During the past 10 years, Dr. Benson's research and development efforts have focused primarily on the provision of technical support and assistance in the area of travel demand model development, travel demand model applications and travel model software support. Through his work with the Transportation Planning and Programming Division of the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), he has been directly or indirectly involved with the model development efforts for most of the metropolitan areas in Texas. He played a major role in TxDOT's migration to the TransCAD software platform for travel demand modeling. Through his work with the Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC), he has provided management and technical guidance in the development of the travel demand models for the region for over 25 years.
Dr. Benson has served on various panels and committees including: the Peer Review Panel for the Development of the Oahu MPO Travel Demand Models and the Texas Statewide Analysis Model Review Panel.
Fred Ducca (University of Maryland)
Dr. Fred Ducca directs the Transportation Policy Research Group of the National Center for Smart Growth (NCSG) at the University of Maryland. As director he supervises the development of the Maryland Statewide Transportation Model (MSTM), a cutting edge tool which analyzes traffic throughout the state of Maryland. The MSTM closely links with the Baltimore and Washington MPO models, allowing the MSTM to respond to changes in land use patterns resulting from activities in individual urban areas. In addition, Dr. Ducca leads the Maryland Scenarios Project, funded by the Maryland Department of Transportation. This project examines long range transportation and land use scenarios in the state of Maryland and surrounding areas. While with the Federal Highway Administration, Dr. Ducca managed the Travel Model Improvement Program (TMIP). The TMIP focused on improving both the state-of-the-art and state of the practice in travel forecasting. TMIP activities ranged from the development of advanced forecasting to integrate activity based forecasts with network simulations, to improvements to current forecasting methods. TMIP also provided training on travel forecasting, conferences and seminars on travel modeling issues, and an email list for modelers to provide technical support to each other.
Dr. Ducca managed the Urban Land Institute's Suburban Mobility Program, a cooperative effort between the private sector and the public sector, local governments, to reduce traffic congestion. The program examined a range of congestion reduction options including allowing higher density, pedestrian friendly site design, transportation impact fees, changes to parking policy and the imposition of carpooling requirements. While in graduate school Dr. Ducca worked on the DRAM and EMPAL population and employment location models. He then integrated DRAM and EMPAL with traffic analysis procedures to create an integrated package of land use and transportation models, allowing for analyses of the interactive effects of travel and urban development.
Karen Faussett (Michigan DOT)
Karen Faussett is the Statewide Model Specialist at the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). She is responsible for the update and maintenance of the Michigan statewide travel demand model and leads the statewide model team.
Karen was also project manager for MDOT's 2004-2005 and 2009 statewide household travel surveys. Before moving to statewide modeling, Karen spent several years developing small urban models at MDOT. Prior to MDOT, Karen worked at the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG). Karen has a Bachelor of Science in Urban Planning from Michigan State University and a Master's Certificate in Project Management from the George Washington University.
Greg Giaimo (Ohio DOT)
Greg Giaimo graduated from the Ohio State University with BSCE (1989) and MS (1991) degrees. He has worked for ODOT as a travel modeler for almost two decades and is a registered professional engineer in Ohio. Besides day to day project and corridor analysis, he is in charge of new model development, data collection and development of technical methods related to the planning process. In this roll he develops methods for producing project level forecasts from models and other inputs and creates those forecasts for complex projects in the northwest quadrant of the state.
Mr. Giaimo estimates/calibrates new travel demand models or manages consultant contracts to do so for the statewide model and seventeen Ohio MPO models and has actively guided Ohio's adoption of advanced modeling techniques focusing on activity micro-simulation, freight, land use and integration of traffic operations models. He develops data collection protocols and implements new technologies for household surveys, intercept surveys and travel time data collection programs and oversees staff and consultants collecting the data. He has also developed various other related planning processes including the statewide congestion management system, bypass project analysis process, transportation review advisory council scoring factors, planning level Highway Capacity Manual program and toll revenue forecasting process.
