Auto Chop

[Chris]

This is another lazy man request. When I am performing a travel time study I like to turn on Tru-Traffic and forget about it. When I get back to the office I have one big trip log file that I will split into individual north/south or east/west runs. This process of splitting the runs and naming takes up time that I think could be automatic. In the end the client gets a trutraffic file with Street A EB - Trip01, Street A WB - Trip02.... They also get a set of video files marked Street A WB - Trip01...
Chris

[bullock]

Thank you for the fine suggestion. I've added it to the to-do list for, I hope, version 9.0.

The automatic splitting process will probably have unintended consequences in some cases. Some users have been putting crossing arteries in the same file (Street A is N/S, and Street B is E/W), and they like to take

• some runs end to end on an artery,
• some runs turning off on the cross street, and
• yet other runs that start SB on Street A, turn WB on the cross Street B, make a U-turn, then turn back SB onto the Street A.

The automated process will not be able to reliably distinguish these intentions. When the trip log turns onto a cross street, it won't whether to split it at that point or preserve it as a single trip. But those users still have the option to do the splitting manually, so having an automated option is only a bonus.

Regards.
Greg

[briniker]

I have an alternative for "Auto Chop"

We also collect our data in the same way and end up with one big loop of data. I agree that the current method for cutting up runs is rather laborious and time consuming (currently it takes hours to process the data and split it up into separate runs), and I would like to be able to divide the data into separate runs more quickly.

Alternate Suggestion: In the Network View window the user could draw a box around the GPS points to select the points that were not needed, then with a right-click menu (or some other method) could delete those points.

[bullock]

Thank you for the nice alternative suggestion.

The software already implements parts of your suggestion. While viewing trip logs in the Network View (or in the arterial timings diagram, or the plots from trip logs),

• Alt-right-click on a trip log point to disable the point.
• Ctrl-right-click on a trip log point to split the trip log at that point.

Users of ver. 10 can do a plain right-click on the point and choose the equivalent commands (or any of a number of other commands) from the Trip Log section of the popup menu.

Except for removing noisy data, most users have no need to disable points, as Tru-Traffic effectively ignores points in the trip log that aren't part of the "run" -- that is, points prior to entering the artery and points past the end of the artery.

Regards.
Greg