Review of 2009 User Meetings

2009 TRICS® USER MEETINGS TAKE PLACE IN LONDON AND YORK

The 2009 TRICS® User Meetings were the most well attended since the annual events began back in 1996. This year they were held in London and York, with attendees reflecting the regional diversity of the TRICS® Community.

The London event was held first, at the Imperial War Museum, in the museum cinema situated amongst many great exhibits. This was followed a week later by the event in York, held at the National Railway Museum (with lunch held amongst the trains in the museum’s Great Hall).

105 delegates attended the London event. TRICS® is committed to the capital, with an annual data collection programme across London’s Boroughs reflecting this. It was good to see many attendees from organisations within London. 68 people attended the event in York, which is a record number for a regional event following the usual London meeting the week earlier.

The meetings commenced with a welcome from TRICS® Consortium Chairman Nick Rabbets, followed by his presentation entitled “A Brief History of TRICS®”. As the system celebrates 20 years from 1989 to 2009, Nick began by highlighting some of the world events that were taking place 20 years ago, to put the lifetime of TRICS® into context. This was followed by a talk about how the system originated and how it has evolved and developed over the years, from the days of MS-DOS up to the present day which sees TRICS® running on its own remote dedicated server in Arizona.

This presentation was followed by a talk on current system developments, which focused on the 30th June 2009 release of TRICS® version 2009(b)v6.4.1. Ian Coles, TRICS® Manager, took attendees through a tour of the new system features such as the re-structured trip rate selection process, the new facility to save work in progress, enhancements to modal split pie charts and trip rate graphs, and the new user video tutorials. Users were told that the new version of the system would be a culmination of a year’s worth of feedback and input, during which a significant number of system enhancements were planned, produced, and delivered.

The next presentation was given by Cali Sparks of West Sussex County Council, who discussed changes to the 2009 TRICS® Good Practice Guide (which is available for viewing on this site). Recent findings on the relationships between trip rate parameters (for example GFA) and trip rates were discussed, as well as the introduction of a new section in the guide dealing with Standardised Assessment Methodology (SAM) surveys.

After a break, the second session consisted of three short and varied presentations on TRICS®-related topics. The first of these was a unique view of TRICS best practice from an everyday user’s perspective. Sandy Macdonald (A F Macdonald & Partners) described examples of dealing with the receipt of TRICS® data from other parties, and how users can influence data collection programmes and system development. This was followed by an introduction to the principles of Park & Ride developments, a direct response to user requests in 2008 for such a topic to be researched, and a presentation on the forthcoming research note into the effect of Travel Plans, highlighting recent re-surveys at pilot sites surveyed as part of the Standardised Assessment Methodology (SAM). All presentations prompted a wide variety of input and questions from attendees, who were, as usual playing a very important role in proceedings.

Following lunch, allowing attendees the opportunity to mingle and network in relaxed surroundings, the event ended with its usual User Workshop. A number of computers were set up for attendees to use, all with the latest TRICS® software loaded, and all those present exchanged ideas on the future of the system and were given demonstrations of TRICS® program features and new enhancements. Attendance at the workshop session was, as usual, very high; it is clear that this part of the annual gathering of the TRICS® Community has become popular.