What are Transportation Planners Talking About?

With more than 10,000 transportation professionals attending the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting, it is a great opportunity to understand what topics are receiving the most attention. Todd Litman recently posted his update from the Transportation Research Board conference here on Planetizen.

Brittany Kubinski @b_kubinski and I @evanscowley have analyzed the tweets from the TRB Conference, from the hashtag #TRBAM. We excluded all of the tweets announcing events and focused on the substantive tweets. The attendees at TRB were active tweeting throughout the conference generating 4,093 tweets from 1,061 people. Most were attending the conference, but several were following along from a distance, including me. Of the more than 10,000 people attending 10 percent were tweeting.

Sharing pictures of slides was popular, for example this slide on comfort ratings by pedestrians, cyclists and motorists. A favorite was this great slide explaining how an LED signal would work for cyclists.  My favorites include this slide explaining why cities matter and bad presentation bingo.

Topics of Conversation

There were several topics that were greatly discussed, the Wordle shares the most common words uses. The top 20 topics are listed below.

Below are the 25 most retweeted tweets of the conference (excluding retweets about announcing an event or session). For Twitter newbies, retweeting is like forwarding an email to people you know. RT @evanscowley means that you are forwarding a Tweet from a user, in this example me. Forty-three percent of the total #TRBAM tweets were retweets (so interesting that someone decided to forward it on). For example, one great quote was circulated frequently "Transportation shouldn’t just get us places better – it should make places better – and lives, too."  And I think my favorite of the conference from @BicycleLobby: “Biking is the ultimate weight loss plan. Ditch your car and lose 7,000 pounds instantly.”

The Meaning of TRBAM Tweets

Sentiment analysis helps us to understand the meaning conveyed in a large group of tweets. To learn more about sentiment analysis I have a publicly available article on the topic. What are the sentiments that transportation professionals are expressing when tweeting about the conference? Are we angry, happy, or something totally different? We found that we are a positive bunch, with 48% expressing positive sentiment. Our analysis of all tweets from the conference, using a language analysis software, expressed key sentiments. We are excited and relaxed (not surprising for a conference). Our tweets express positive emotions. This is exactly what one would hope to see at a conference where the use of Twitter is meant to support social interaction between unknown people with shared interests.

Who Participated?

A total of 1,061 different transportation professionals tweeted during the conference which is a wonderful number of participants, but what was the level of equality in participations. How many people were heavy Tweeters and how many were light users? Similar to other research about the use of social media a small number of people dominate the conversations with 3.1 percent of the users sending out 35 percent of the tweets. BUT, we can also see that we had a wide array of users with many participating one or a few times. For example, 37 percent of the tweets came from the 86 percent of participants who tweeted five or fewer times.

There were clearly key influencers at the conference whose tweets were frequently retweeted. The top 15 influencers at the conference included: @transportgooru, @JosephKopser, @TRBofNA, @transsafe, @Diplomacy_Notes, @EDRGroup, @Micah_Himmel, @l_zilinski, @manhattanriss, @MilliganPartnrs, @pkoonce, @vabike, @FehrAndPeers, @LloydBrown, and @mamakoid. A number of these people are not just influencers at the conference, but are influencers all year round with more than 1,000 followers on Twitter. @transportgooru, @TRBofNA, @pkoonce, @LloydBrown (tweeting on transportation), @Diplomacy_Notes (tweeting on meaningful dialogue), @vabike (tweeting on bicycle advocacy), and @mamakoid (tweeting environmental planning).

Resources from the Conference

Conference attendees did a great job sharing links to all kinds of content. The volume of links was overwhelming, so we took those that were retweeted and have grouped the various links by topic below.

Bicycling

• Biking Made Easier Downtown
• DC Bicycle Facility Evaluation
• Factors Influencing the Desirability of Streets for Cycling
• Suggesting Bike Sharing Stations in Chicago
• Does Driving Stop When Cycling Spikes?

Finance

• Progress on the Federal Budget
• Infrastructure Deficit
• Could State DOTs provide better service for Less Cost

Mobile Apps

• Mobile Apps for Planning
• RideScout
• Smart Phone Tool for Trip Tracking

Parking

• How London plans to eliminate the search for a parking spot

Public Participation

• Social Media in NEPA
• Why Transportation is a Civil Rights Issue

Safety

• Secretary Foxx Pledges to Make Bicyclist/Pedestrian Safety a Priority
• FHWA Safety Information
• Safety of Self Driving Cars
• Myths around Older People and Road Safety
• Safe Clean Fair Green Agenda

Street Design

• Defining the worst type of street design

Technology

• http://www.its.dot.gov/
• Big Data Notes
• Transportation Data Management Wiki
• Compact Brain for Self Driving Cars
• ITS Capacity Building Program
• The Path to Autonomous Vehicles

General Transportation Issues

• The Future of Transportation
• What Traffic will Look Like in the Future
• Taxi Protest over Ubercar
• Highway Operations
• The Innovative DOT
• Service Reliability in a Network Context
• Pocket Guide to Transportation
• Rethinking the Goals of Transportation
• Fuel Economy State of the World
• Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium
• Imagining a new urban environment with Driverless Cars

So are there any transportation trends that surprised–either by being here or by not being here? Let me know in the comments.

My takeaway from the use of Twitter at the conference is that a significant number of people were able to use this medium to share and engage in conversations around transportation topics that resonate with them. It provided a platform to engage in social conversations that helped people meet each other both on and off line. What more could we ask for from social media in a conference?