Gorove Slade Internship Experience
Gorove Slade was pleased to welcome three terrific interns to the firm this summer! During the summer months, Amit, Lauren, and Lena were integrated into the company – attended coordination meetings, helped write reports, and collaborated on a project they chose to present to the firm at the end of the program. Before returning to their respective schools, the interns had an opportunity to talk about their overall experiences and reflect on their time at Gorove Slade.
What were your expectations coming into this internship program?
Amit: I was interested in learning through a very hands-on experience – what firms are actually doing to improve transit and transportation, how to incorporate multi modal systems and support multi modal systems. Improving transit and bicycle infrastructure is something I wanted to learn more about. Gorove Slade seemed like a great place to do that.
Lauren: Coming into it I was really eager to learn more and learn from new people in a different company. I was most excited to try a different type of engineering from my previous internship. I was more excited to learn about what transportation engineering actually is outside of roadway design and also from a traffic viewpoint.
What interests you about transportation engineering?
Lena: I’m really interested in multimodal transportation.
Lauren: I like the technical part of engineering, but I also like how it’s really policy-oriented. It has to do with a lot of personal interactions with people in the community.
What did you learn through the internship?
Amit: I think I was hoping for a broad range of experiences that speak to as many different facets of transportation planning and engineering as possible. And that’s definitely something that has happened. I‘ve been able to work with Excel on the growth of trips over time and trip generation. I’ve been able to use programs and platforms that I haven’t used before, such as ArcGIS and Synchro. That’s been cool to see the tools professionals use in the field and gain exposure to them.
Lauren: Synchro was super useful, which I had never even heard of before I came here. During the introduction session I was super overwhelmed, but as I’ve gotten used to it, that’s been really useful. I really like writing reports and memos; I really do enjoy that and seeing all the different actions that go into it – the planning, engineering, and the graphics.
What surprised you?
Amit: I didn’t really understand coming in all the technical aspects so it was more of a learning process, this is how in depth we go on a day to day basis. The one thing that was cool after doing a CTR report on pedestrian facilities, I started looking at sidewalk lifts as I was walking down the street or looking at crosswalks going ‘oh does that one meet what I think the code says it should be.’ That was something cool I came out of it with. In a similar way looking at the number of lanes that streets have and thinking ‘okay what might the background or the rationale of why this street has this many lanes, or two turn lanes vs one turn lane.’ That was something I definitely came out of it with.
Lena: I feel like I’m surprised at least once a week because I learn something new about how things run. I didn’t know schools had to have a transportation plan and pickup/drop-off is different than any other place. That was cool to learn. Even parking garages, it’s kind of cool to understand how they work and what goes into that. Even when I didn’t work on those things, it was cool to hear people talk about it or present about it.
What was the internship project?
Amit: At the beginning of the internship, we were given a prompt to create a project that would improve Gorove Slade as a firm. Wide range of things that we could do. It was nice to have the freedom of exploring any topic that we thought would help the firm and have it be something we were interested in. I think most of us if not all of us were interested in GIS and the different capabilities of that. We also saw during the scoping process and the project start up process, often times some of the first conversations we had were what are the other projects in the area of this project, what’s the zoning in the area, how are the intersections, things like that. So we created a map that blocks projects that Gorove Slade has worked on and has further information on zoning and other data fields that are often used or looked at during the project start up phase. We made that map, it looks really fancy, and it was a lot of fun to do.
Lena: It’s definitely different than what you typically do as a transportation planner or engineer. It really brought me outside of my comfort in terms of the software we used and thinking about how we can design this so that everyone can use it and I really got to use different things that I’ve learned so far outside of engineering, I got to use some coding and GIS, that’s different than what the company typically uses it for so that was cool that we got the opportunity to do that.
How was the process of working on the internship project?
Lena: We first heard about it during our first week and we had an introduction meeting. Maria went over what we were supposed to do and then we had about 2 weeks to come up with some ideas for what we wanted to do with that. We asked around people in the company around us, what do they think would be useful in helping to make Gorove Slade a better place. Once we chose an idea then we started to look into the basics of what do we want to do, how can we add to that, and how can it be useful. From that we kind of split up the work in terms of who would do what and just made sure that every week we accomplished something and checked in with each other and Maria too.
Lauren: At first it was definitely super open ended it was kind of hard to come up with an idea because the subject was so broad. I’m pretty sure Amit came up with the idea, he wanted to work in GIS which I thought was cool I’ve done it a little bit in school but never really played around with it on my own so this gave me the opportunity to learn as I was doing it. It was cool to think about how much we got done in 8 weeks of work that we built this whole thing, how much information it holds, and it has a lot of potential I think.
Amit: The intern group met once a week with a project manager, Maria and we would gain feedback on what we did in the week and report any issues we were having any breakthroughs that we had as well and just got guidance on how we could improve the project and that was super helpful in making sure the project stayed relevant and useful to what the firm needed. We were also able to talk to other people at the firm in terms of learning of how to use GIS and that learning was very important in making the tool more helpful and more comprehensive than what we initially planned.
What did you learn from the experience?
Amit: I think from the workflow perspective, it acts as a lunch and learn presentation which is something that it seems like everyone at the firm is doing so it was cool to be able to do a similar workflow or balance to at least mimic what members of the firm are doing. It was definitely valuable in terms of organizational and time management perspective. I think I also enjoyed the freedom of being able to explore a topic that we were interested in and relevant to the work Gorove Slade was doing. It acted as a facet to augment our experience here or add to it in a way we may not have been able to do if we were exclusively working on the reports that we would normally be doing.
Lauren: I think for me personally the process of teaching myself ArchGIS and teaching myself how to use that, not a challenge, but just learning something new. Lena and Amit are a little better at it than I am. IT was a good learning opportunity. We had a lot of challenges trying to figure out going forward if there’s a more efficient way of doing it. Finding the addresses was super time consuming. Going forward we don’t want people to have to search manually through scoping documents and graphics, that was our big challenge.
Outside of the office, what your summer like?
Amit: I love DC, especially compared to San Francisco. I love DC, I love all the weirdly angled streets and it’s very green and the food’s been awesome as well so I can’t complain about that at all. Very walkable. I’ve been able to get to wherever I want with metro. Every weekend I’ve been doing something interesting that I couldn’t do anywhere else with the number of museums. There’s always something to do.
Lena: It was really cool, I’ve never lived in the city before it was really fun exploring and especially by bike which is a different experience. Not having a car so biking, walking and transit you really get to experience the city that way. I went to a bunch of different parks, restaurants and areas in the city. There’s so much to do so I don’t think you could ever get bored here.
How do you like to spend your free time in DC?
Lena: I did so many things every weekend. I have a list of things or places I wanted to get to each weekend even to just stop by. I don’t think there’s anything big, I just like discovering parks or trails even when I wasn’t intending to go there. I really love the Klingle Valley Trail, I wasn’t even planning to go there so that was really cool.
Amit: My dream Saturday plan for coming to DC, get out early in the morning, take the metro to either Dupont Circle or Adam’s Morgan, get some food there. I really enjoyed the National Building Museum as a planning nut, that was fantastic, I really enjoyed going there. I’m a sports fan, so a DC United game was a ton of fun. I’d recommend going to a Nats game as well. Adam’s Morgan was awesome, it reminded me of Berkeley. There were a lot of people out on the street, exciting things going on, and tons of food options.
Lauren: I’ve lived here my entire life, I’m very used to the area, very familiar. I’m a huge sports fan, so definitely any sports, I went to a Nats game last weekend, so that was fun. I went recently to the pedal boats at the Jefferson memorial. I like anything on the water, there’s great fishing spots in DC, anything outdoorsy. I also really like Georgetown and the monuments.
What advice would you give future interns?
Lauren: I would say definitely network! The reason I like Gorove Slade so much is because it’s such a small company. I really liked being able to meet everyone, I would encourage future interns to network with as many people as they could within the company. I found it really useful to hear a bunch of different perspectives because everyone works on something different. I think we do a lot of really notable projects too, that can give you a good push to work on something well known.
Lena: I would definitely say to not be nervous about anything. I would just say be yourself, it’s a fun place to work and you’ll see it when you interact with people here.
Would you recommend interning at Gorove Slade?
Amit: I would definitely recommend interning at Gorove Slade. It’s a lot of fun and it’s real experience, you’re doing real projects that are going to be submitted to DDOT and VDOT. I think the main thing I’ll say is that I didn’t feel like any of my time here was wasted or that what I was doing was going to be saved in a drive folder and never looked at again. Even the tasks that seemed simple and straightforward, found their way into a report, or ended up being background information for some kind of calculation. That was something I appreciated a lot, I felt like what I was doing was actually going to be helpful. I also learned a lot. The way I framed it in my head is in school, or in class we do a lot of theoretical thinking, “why does this framework of looking at transportation work” or “why would we do this or that” but interning at Gorove Slade it was very practical. Here’s the issue that we have find a way to get it done, make sure that it gets done on time. I think that’s an important experience to have that’s separate from what you’d have in the classroom. Made me think in a different way and a more practical way. I would recommend it. Be ready to learn quickly but it’s a lot of fun.
Tollbooth-style PUDO
Scramble-style PUDO
A scramble-style PUDO refers to when some (or all) students are being dropped off or picked up on the street, not an adjacent sidewalk, and walking between cars. For scrambles, some cars drive into a designated area, and then they all stop and don’t move again until all students arrive safely at the school or in their car at dismissal. Scrambles are often used during dismissal for schools with limited sidewalks since a scramble allows for more cars to load simultaneously.
Scramble-style PUDO
When helping plan a school, what does Gorove Slade recommend? In short, all of them. Our recommendation is to design a PUDO facility that can be flexible and work for several operational styles. Once up and running, the staff and teachers can try several and see what works best. The goal is to give them the tools they need to find the best solution.
An example is the new Cardinal Elementary School in Arlington, VA. We recommended a flexible system with ample sidewalks and a bypass lane, and once it was up and running, the facility operated a bit differently than planned. At dismissal, teachers split the facility in two, with two pick-up waiting spots – one for younger grades closer to the school and one for older ones further away. This allowed for quicker matching at dismissal times.
Afternoon pick-up at Cardinal Elementary School
PUDO Analysis
Gorove Slade handles the analysis of PUDO facilities in several ways. They are inherently tricky to analyze because some operational details are challenging to model, and the significant demand is very sensitive to variables leading to large ranges of results.
Here are three ways we approach analyzing PUDO:
Queuing Analysis/Equations
One method is to use classic queuing equations, which transportation engineers have used for decades for toll booths. They are based on three factors: the arrival rate of cars, the number of booths, and the processing speed of the toll. All three of these factors correspond to PUDO facilities.
Even so, queuing equations often fail to get accurate results for PUDO facilities. For example, we were working for a private school with a notorious PUDO problem at dismissal, so we went to the field and measured the arrival rate of cars, the number of vehicles that could load simultaneously, and the average time for each pick-up. We then entered that information into our queuing models, which then told us the queue should be negative, or in other words, there shouldn’t be a queue at all, as the car arrival rate was less than the overall number of cars that could be processed.
Subsequently, we returned to our observation notes and video. We realized the longest queue in the field was when dismissal began and that our model was correct in that the queue was being processed faster than additional cars arrived. Parents and guardians arrived so early that they stacked up well beyond the school property, but once dismissal started, the queue only got shorter as more cars showed up.
The lesson we learned here is that there are more factors in the queuing analysis than just the traditional three and that arrival rates are not random.
Comparable Analysis
A common transportation engineering practice is to study comparable locations, and sometimes, that works well for PUDO facilities, especially when queuing equations don’t work as described above. We’ve taken max queue data at several private and public schools. We can try to match the car length per student ratio from a site comparable to the one we’re working on, given the design and operational elements of their PUDO.
There are two issues with using comparable data. The first one is that there’s an extensive range of data, so using our observed data leads to a max queue range of 0.10 to 0.20 cars per student being picked up. The wide range is due to how well the PUDO processes traffic and the starting queue length. To use these ratios, you need to estimate how well the PUDO will operate within this range.
But more importantly, our observations found some schools with a max queue under the 0.10 cars per student range during dismissal. This wasn’t because they had fewer cars picking up students; it was because the cars weren’t all in the same place. For example, the school we observed once had around 25 to 30 cars picking up simultaneously, but only six were at the official pick-up spot at the front door. The others were in the parking lot or curbside in several locations. So, when planning PUDO facilities, the ability of parents to use informal locations near the school can be a huge factor in the max queues and overall PUDO operations.
VISSIM Modeling
When something other than engineering judgment combined with the two analyses stiles above is desired, we turn to detailed traffic models using the VISSIM software platform. VISSIM models are highly detailed and can account for things like starting queues and varying arrival rates. The main drawback is that they require more time and resources to assemble, and in the end, they still can’t arrive at a perfect representation of a PUDO since human behavior is always a factor.
Thoughtful design and operations can dramatically improve the pick-up and drop-off process. Whether planning a brand new PUDO experience or improving existing operations, the principles and methods discussed here provide a framework for tackling one of the most persistent logistical challenges for administrators and parents alike. By considering key factors like demand patterns, operational strategies, and facility types, schools can create systems that minimize queuing, reduce neighborhood impacts, and make the beginning and end of the school day better for all.
