February 28, 2023 • 30 mins
Even after wrapping up a 46-year stretch at TTI, Tim Lomax still enjoys the adrenaline rush that comes from finding new traffic challenges, and fixing them.
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Bernie Fette (host) (00:14):
Hello and welcome back.
This is Thinking Transportation-- conversations about how we
get ourselves and the things weneed from one place to another.
I'm Bernie Fette with the TexasA&M Transportation Institute.
Workers in America spend anaverage of about four years
(00:35):
working for one employer beforeswitching jobs.
And then there are those whomeasure their time at the same
workplace in decades instead ofyears.
Our guest for this episode, TimLomax, is one of those who's
been in it for the long haul,sticking with TTI for more than
(00:55):
half his life.
Plenty of time to collectstories and form impressions
about how roadway travel haschanged since postage stamps
cost less than a quarter.
That's at least part of what wecan expect to hear about today
as Tim retires from TTI.
Tim, thanks for joining us.
Tim Lomax (guest) (01:17):
Absolutely.
Appreciate the opportunity.
Bernie Fette (01:19):
So how many years?
Tim Lomax (01:22):
This is my, uh, 46th year at TTI.
48 fall semesters.
Bernie Fette (01:29):
.
Okay.
Tim Lomax (01:30):
Including my, uh, undergrad.
Bernie Fette (01:32):
Just for a point of reference, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, 46years is more than 10 times the
average job tenure today.
Tim Lomax (01:43):
I have not been able to get a real job in all those
years.
And, so.
Bernie Fette (01:47):
Okay.
Well then, I'm curious aboutwhether or not your first job at
TTI is what you would call areal job.
Long before the glamor and fame.
Tim Lomax (01:57):
When I was a student worker making graphs on paper.
Bernie Fette (02:00):
Right on paper.
And some people I think would beinterested to know if it
involved a slide rule.
Tim Lomax (02:05):
, I, I use a
straight edge a lot.
Bernie Fette (02:09):
Okay.
Tim Lomax (02:10):
Yeah, no slide rules.
We'd, we'd moved on tocalculators since then.
Bernie Fette (02:14):
I see.
Okay.
Well that's, that's another goodpoint of reference.
Okay.
But seriously, actually, tell usa little bit more about it.
You said making calculations onpaper.
What was the nature of your veryfirst job?
At TTI,
Tim Lomax (02:27):
I was a student worker making graphs for reports
and for analysis.
I had graph paper of alldifferent kinds.
I had data sets that I wasplotting and trying to find
relationships, you know,straight lines through the data.
I think I did a little bit ofroadway design with a lot of
(02:48):
supervision because I was not aroadway designer at that point.
I remember a lot of calculationsand a lot of, uh, boxing of
tables.
Something you can doautomatically in Word now.
We actually had to take a penand draw a box around a, a table
that had been typed on thepaper.
Bernie Fette (03:06):
Well, joking aside, it says a lot about how
far the industry has come, howfar the research world has come,
too.
So did that first job tell you,wow, I'm gonna spend the rest of
my career and more than half ofmy life working at this place?
Or did that first job make youwonder?
(03:27):
What was I thinking?
Tim Lomax (03:30):
My career path is not normal in any reasonable
explanation of normal.
I knew I wanted to be atransportation engineer when I,
in the seventh grade, I wantedto work with buses and cars and
freeways.
My mother, uh, when I was youngtold me to go play on the
freeway and that's pretty muchmy career inspiration.
(03:51):
I was intrigued by what we weredoing at TTI, but I had assumed
that I was gonna be moving on toa big city and doing something
with a street or a highway or atransit system.
And towards the end of my senioryear, I was looking around for a
job and TTI offered me a job towork full-time and go to school
(04:13):
part-time, get a master's degreeand eventually a PhD.
Kept thinking I was gonna leaveand go to a big city, but
somehow never accomplished that.
But that's sort of where thecareer started.
Bernie Fette (04:25):
Seventh grade.
What was it that came to mind atthat point in your youth that
prompted you in that direction?
Tim Lomax (04:33):
I lived in Houston.
Houston was, uh, dramaticallyexpanding at that point and I
was intrigued by how peoplemoved around.
I was pretty good at math, soengineering was kinda something
I thought I would enjoy.
I didn't really like talking topeople and I knew that engineers
didn't really have to talk topeople.
They had to do calculations anddo designs.
(04:55):
So seemed like a, seemed like agood career path for me.
Bernie Fette (05:00):
And we can see how that particular aspiration
worked out in subsequent yearsthat we'll talk about a little
bit later.
But if we fast forward to whatmost people associate you with,
measuring traffic congestion,the Urban Mobility Report, I'm
guessing you had some options onwhat you would want to work on.
(05:20):
So I guess my question is whyfocus on that topic over others
that might merit attention?
Tim Lomax (05:28):
Well, the Texas Department of Transportation
came to us.
They said we'd like to be ableto talk to the public about the
effect of this, but we don'treally have a very good measure
that works for us as engineers,but also works for communication
of the general population.
Most of the performance measureswe used back then had very
(05:51):
technical sounding names andnumbers and it was hard to
relate them to anything.
And so they asked us to take alook at that challenge and come
up with something that theycould use to talk to the public.
I had access to some verylimited data sets, but we came
up with something that wethought would work.
(06:13):
It sort of used the startup badcongestion as a trigger.
And we had experience withHouston.
Houston in 1970 was a prettygood operating roadway system.
By 1980, it was one of the worstplaces in the country, so we
knew somewhere it went from goodto bad.
And so we started looking at awhole bunch of data and figured
(06:33):
out, you know, maybe mid decadewas about when that was.
So we went back and looked atthe performance measures to see
what the levels were and usedthose as a way to calibrate kind
of the start of bad congestion(air quotes, if you will).
And that became the start ofthis Urban Mobility Report
series.
We looked at the Texas citiesand then we, in another contract
(06:57):
expanded to cities in the southand the west and we kept getting
questions about how do wecompare with Chicago and New
York and and other places thatwere outside those sort of
suburban type designs.
And eventually expanded itnationally.
We kept changing the methodologyand the data sets to match the
(07:18):
available information, butthat's kinda where it started
this question of what are wegetting for what we're paying?
Bernie Fette (07:25):
For somebody who got into engineering in part so
he wouldn't have to talk topeople, you've talked to quite a
few people over the years aboutthis work in a variety of
situations and venues.
You've been on countless TV newsbroadcasts, newspaper articles,
testified before Congress,before the Texas House and the
(07:48):
Texas Senate, not to mentionspeeches to goodness knows how
many industry groups-- all aboutthis work or something related
to your work with mobilitymeasurement.
What do you think that all ofthat attention says about the
subject that you were talkingabout?
Tim Lomax (08:04):
Obviously people care about their travel times to
work.
Obviously congestion existedbefore we started measuring it
in our reports.
I think the approach that wedeveloped on the data side and
that you and others on thecommunication side helped us put
the information out.
I think that is a relativelyunique combination in the
(08:30):
research world or uh, eventransportation in general.
I think we have together, Idon't know that pioneered is the
right word, but certainly pushedthe state of the practice to a
place where it's more recognizednow that it's good to do the
work, but you also have to makeit understandable.
(08:51):
I think you and others, uh, butreally principally you deserve a
ton of credit for helping anengineer be able to talk to all
those people that you justlisted.
Technically, I always had mymother as my target audience.
If I could explain it to my mom,I felt like that's kind of who
our measures should be.
(09:12):
I know the first couple of yearsof doing the mobility report, I
would answer the phone call,answer the questions, and
whenever the reporter said, isthere anything else I should ask
you?
Or is there anything else youwant to tell me?
I would say no and hang up thephone just as fast as possible
because that limited my chancesof messing up.
(09:33):
And that was my only goal was tonot mess up.
You and your coaching helped mebecome more comfortable and
understand that this is also myinterview.
It's not just the person who'sinterviewing me and I've got
some information that they wantand they want to convey to their
readers or listeners.
(09:53):
And it's important that I makesure that they understand what I
know to the best of my ability.
And I think that's been a hugepart of what we've been able to
do.
Yes, it's good technicalinformation.
I would put us up againstanybody, but the way we
communicated is also at the topof the field.
Bernie Fette (10:14):
And as you noticed, you became bilingual in
the process.
You learned how to speak Englishand engineer, right?
Tim Lomax (10:22):
, I think the
English just still needs some
work, but yeah,
Bernie Fette (10:28):
A lot of the people that we're talking about
that you've spoken to, whetherthey were reporters or people in
the industry, a lot of peoplehave placed a really high value
on the Urban Mobility Report.
It's regarded as a gold standardof sorts.
It's been called a definitivemeasure of what it measures by a
(10:49):
lot of respected research groupsand agencies around the country.
But you have not been withoutcritics along the way.
And several years ago when thosecritics emerged and were
attacking the research that youand your colleagues were doing,
do you recall, what was yourfirst reaction to the criticism
and what did you take away fromthe experience going forward in
(11:13):
subsequent years after that?
Tim Lomax (11:15):
Our first reaction was, what are their questions?
What are their problems?
Cuz I think that's really wherewe start almost everything.
We get a research project or aphone call or a question from
somebody.
It's always first you try tounderstand what the issue is
that they're bringing up.
And then you sort of, okay, welllet's parse that out, or let's
(11:39):
figure out what the details ofthe questions are and then let's
go back and look at what we'redoing and uh, see if the
criticisms that they're levelingsee what of that we need to take
back and rework or explainbetter or change or you know,
whatever.
It was particularly interestingbecause we had some of the same
(12:04):
questions they did.
We had been asking some of thesame questions about the data,
about the comparison standardswe were using, and we had been
changing our methods and ourmeasures to adapt to that.
So as we got into the criticismand sort of trying to figure out
what we could take from it, someof it was, yes, you're right,
(12:27):
and I can prove that you'reright because we've already
changed that.
And so the criticism was kind ofa few reports ago in general.
And the ones we were working onat that point, we, we had
adjusted some of our thinking.
Some other thinking was morealong the lines of the folks who
(12:49):
were criticizing the reportwanted us to be solutionists.
They wanted us to push aparticular strategy or a
particular solution.
And I think we had done enoughresearch both through the
literature and just talking topeople watching how policies and
programs evolve to know that toattack a congestion problem, you
(13:13):
really need a whole bunch ofdifferent strategies starting
off with, accept that there isgonna be some level of
congestion.
We're not gonna get rid of thetraffic congestion.
But working through the researchthat we had done, it was pretty
clear that a broad set ofstrategies was usually
important.
And applying them wherever theyare publicly accepted and
(13:36):
fundable is the best strategy.
Bernie Fette (13:40):
In recent years I know we have talked a little and
actually joked a little abouthow far the work with the Urban
Mobility Report has has comeover the years.
And in terms of trying tocommunicate those findings,
we've joked about how we startedoff with overnight packages with
Federal Express overnightpackages and how we doubled our
(14:02):
productivity from one year tothe next by adding a second fax
machine.
, obviously we startedthis before the Internet.
Tim Lomax (14:08):
A great leap forward.
Bernie Fette (14:10):
Yeah, great leap forward prior to the Internet
age.
But on the technical side with,if you could please speak in lay
terms as much as you can, howhas the Urban Mobility Report
and its related research,whatever orbits around it, how
has that advanced the most overthe years to become the more
(14:32):
precise and relied upon measurethat it has?
Tim Lomax (14:36):
Early on we were using traffic counts and roadway
capacities in a, as a fairlystandard, this was a fairly
standard approach, still is awell accepted industry norm.
In the mid-nineties, we got acontract from the National
(15:01):
Highway Research Program to lookat how you quantify congestion
and went through a bunch ofdifferent measures and data sets
and came up with, you know,really what we ought to be
measuring what people care aboutis travel time.
And at that point, we didn'treally have the data that we
needed to do that, but it waspretty clear that that was the
(15:24):
right measure.
And so our guidance was take themeasures that we have and turn
them into a travel time estimateor an extra travel time
estimate, which we call traveldelay.
So speaking about congestion interms of how much time is it
gonna take you to get somewhere,or how much extra time are you
(15:46):
gonna spend in traffic, or howmuch does that time vary from
day to day, I think was awatershed moment in our work.
We started to transition ourinformation into that format,
even though again, we didn'thave the data.
It wasn't until the early 2010sthat we finally had the kinds of
(16:11):
data sets that we have now.
We were starting to getinformation from cell phones and
cars and instrumented freeways,instrumented streets that could
tell you actual travel times.
And that's really where we'vetried to make the data advances
(16:31):
in the last several years, is wehave a bunch of really smart
people(not me) who know how touse the data in ways that can
help us tell the stories that wewant to tell that are relevant
to people.
How much extra time do I spendon the road?
What does it cost me?
(16:51):
How much is that time gonna varyfrom day to day?
How much time do truckers needto allow to, you know, make
their shipment on time?
Things like that.
Bernie Fette (17:01):
The next thing I think that naturally follows is
if given the improvements thatyou guys were able to implement
over the years with the new datasets and the new questions that
arose from sponsoring agencies,where do your colleagues, as you
depart, have the greatest roomfor improving this field of
(17:21):
research?
Tim Lomax (17:22):
We are getting more information about sort of
door-to-door ordriveway-to-driveway trips now
than we had in the past.
A lot of our information came tous almost as pieces of road.
So you get speeds along a streetor a freeway and you put all
(17:46):
those together and that tellsyou something about the trips
along that freeway.
Really what you'd like to haveare information about how people
and freight actually use thatnetwork.
Where they get on, where theyget off, uh, actual travel path
that they take.
(18:07):
A lot of this is being collectedeither on your phone or in your
connected car.
It gets anonymized and then sentto us in a data set.
That is a way for us tounderstand what those travel
paths are.
I think that's gonna give usmuch better insight into the
actual travel times that peopleare facing and over time how
(18:31):
those destinations might change.
You know, during Covid, peoplestopped going into the office as
much and there were more tripsto a lot of other destinations,
takeout food stores, parks,things like that.
The information that we can getfrom the travel between the trip
ends will be invaluable, notonly in helping us understand
(18:53):
the congestion problem, but alsounderstanding how we can help
agencies change thetransportation network to better
serve people.
And those desired trips.
Bernie Fette (19:05):
Special event traffic.
Tim Lomax (19:06):
Mm-hmm.
.
Bernie Fette (19:07):
You went from working primarily on freeway and
arterial street congestion tothe congestion that happens
around a football stadium with ahundred thousand people in it.
I know that that was another oneof what I guess you might call
milestones along the careerpath.
Can you give us a quickrecollection of how that came
(19:27):
together?
Tim Lomax (19:29):
Texas A&M was hosting Alabama in a football game in
2013.
This was the year after JohnnyManziel had won the Heisman.
We had beaten Alabama inAlabama.
They came to our place for a2:30 game.
Both teams were in the top five,it's gonna be a huge event.
So some of my colleagues and Igot together and we said, you
(19:49):
know, this is kind of a uniqueopportunity.
We're gonna be able to watchsome really, probably pretty
significant traffic.
Maybe we should learn somethingfrom this.
And so I rode a bicycle aroundon the game day and we got a
bunch of good observations andsome good ideas and put them
together.
And then we had a great team ofTTI people who helped put
(20:10):
together a plan.
But then as I started trying tofigure out what was going on, it
was very clear that there were alot of passionate, dedicated
people on campus and in thecommunity who could help us not
only understand what that planought to look like, but also how
to make it happen.
So we got a lot of support fromthe Convention and Visitors
Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce,the downtown Bryan merchants,
(20:33):
obviously all the transportationagencies.
But you know, there's uh,literally hundreds of people on
campus that make a game dayhappen.
And not just the event staff,but support staff, custodial
services, all the transportationpeople that drive buses or stand
at intersections.
And I've, I feel really lucky tohave gotten to know those people
(20:54):
and played a small role inhelping make game days better.
Bernie Fette (20:59):
And I think the experience from what I've heard,
relates directly to theimportance that you were raising
earlier about knowing how topackage information for a
particular audience.
Because goodness knows you hadquite a few different audiences
whenever you're dealing with anevent like that.
Tim Lomax (21:15):
Yeah, it's a cool challenge to take the kind of
pointy-headed ivory towercalculations and planning and
put it into action and then besomewhere you can watch what's
happening and when yourbrilliant idea doesn't work
spectacularly, within 30 secondsor 45 seconds, you can change
(21:36):
that brilliant idea to someother idea and, uh.
Bernie Fette (21:40):
Equally brilliant.
Tim Lomax (21:42):
Uh, you know, we're gonna put brilliant in air
quotes, how about that?
Bernie Fette (21:45):
Yeah.
Stretch that definition there.
Tim Lomax (21:47):
But, but being able to be involved and be trusted
enough that people would eitherdo what I said or say, you know,
Lomax, that's really stupid.
We tried that and that doesn'twork.
So you say, okay, well thenlet's think for a couple
seconds.
Okay, how about we do this?
Okay, well yeah, that soundslike it might work.
Okay, well let's do that.
Who do we need to call?
(22:07):
Who do we need to talk to?
What devices do we need?
You know, and, and sort ofworking through that
second-to-second,minute-to-minute change.
Again, I think the last 10 yearsof my career, I've just been in
it for the adrenaline rush thatI get.
And that's certainly a way toget the adrenaline flowing.
Bernie Fette (22:25):
Circling back for just a couple of minutes to that
first job that we talked about.
You were in graduate school, soyou had a number of faculty
members, perhaps othertransportation experts who were
in your orbit, I imagine whetheryou asked for their advice or
whether they just gave it to youbefore you asked.
I wonder what was the bestadvice that those early advisors
(22:50):
gave you 46 years ago?
Tim Lomax (22:53):
I think the best advice I had came from my
parents who basically taught meto ask questions, you know, some
version of question everything,and keep asking questions to
find out information.
It probably drove them crazy,but I think having an
encouragement of the learningprocess was kind of the start on
(23:16):
my research career.
And then the folks that Istudied under and worked with
were very supportive of that andgave me the guidance as well as
the support and the sense that Ishould pursue information and
(23:37):
pursue job opportunities orprojects that I was interested
in because that was gonna bewhat I would be the best at or,
or be the most dedicated to.
And I've really tried to livethat out.
I tell people that I think Ihave the best job on the planet
because if I can get people topay me to do what I wanna do, I
(23:59):
get to do what I wanna do.
I can't imagine a better jobthan that.
And I think if you're, you havea college degree, you have some
passionate interest in a topicand you can get to the position
that I'm in, you should continueto do that.
You should sort of hold yourselfto that kind of standard.
If you're not doing somethingyou enjoy and look forward to
(24:24):
coming to work, then you know,you should either talk to your
boss and see if there isn'tsomething, some other job or
some other version of whatyou're doing that would be more
interesting or find another job.
You know, life's way too shortto do stuff that you don't
really want to do if you havethose options, I feel lucky to
(24:45):
have had the options, but Ithink it's also been, uh, a lot
of encouragement to pursue whatI'm interested in.
Bernie Fette (24:52):
So fair to say that you give other students
today, the very same advice thatyou were given four and a half
decades ago?
Tim Lomax (25:00):
Seems to have worked out well for me.
So keep doing it.
Bernie Fette (25:04):
Relatively timeless.
Let's wrap up with a questionthat you were actually referring
to earlier about when thatreporter asks you.
"Well, is there anything elsethat I should be asking you?"
Well, before you follow thatinitial instinct that you had
years ago, hang up andturn off this particular
(25:24):
interview.
I'll just ask you, is thereanything else that I should have
asked you, any parting thoughtsthat you would like to share?
Tim Lomax (25:31):
I have been incredibly lucky to be at, uh,
TTI and working with people likeyou and Chris and Dave Schrank,
Shawn Turner, Bill Eisele, have,have made the last several years
of my career really enjoyable.
They've allowed me to kind ofcontinue to do what I want to
do.
I'm very excited that Deb Alberthas taken over the kind of local
(25:53):
work and the special eventtransportation stuff that I have
been doing.
But I've worked with so manygreat people at TTI and the
sponsors, the folks that haveasked us interesting questions
and trusted our judgment.
Again, I can't imagine a betterjob.
I think if there's one piece ofadvice that I've given people is
(26:15):
to be active in looking forsolutions, and that sort of goes
for research reports, but alsoif you're standing in a street
directing traffic and thetraffic isn't going the way you
think it ought to go, change it.
You know, be aggressive with ourknowledge, with our deployment
(26:36):
of our information.
Make sure that you package theinformation in a way the
audience can understand it, butbe persistent and consistent
about making that case, becauseI think there's a lot of
transportation people that haveinformation that the public is
really interested in.
We just gotta make sure that weput it in a form where they can
(26:57):
consider it and, you know, make,uh, informed choices.
I think that's really the bestoutcome of our research is that
we inform the choices thatpeople make.
Bernie Fette (27:07):
What's next?
Tim Lomax (27:09):
I'm still looking for opportunities to get involved in
the special eventtransportation, transportation
operations.
I enjoy the adrenaline of fixingtraffic in a very real sense,
both the planning and the, uh,day-to-day operation of a
football game or a basketballgame or a auto race or whatever.
(27:31):
I really enjoy that, but I'malso gonna spend a lot more time
with my grandkids.
The last several years we'vebeen able to spend more time
with them and probably, uh, gowatch a lot more baseball,
soccer games and gymnastics andvolleyball games.
Bernie Fette (27:49):
We've been visiting with Tim Lomax and
reflecting on his 46 years ofservice in transportation
research and leadership at TTI.
Tim, thanks for sharing yourmemories and your insights with
us, and congratulations on astellar career, particularly
that part about gettingcomfortable talking to people
(28:10):
when that was one of the thingsthat you had as a career goal to
avoid all these years.
So congratulations again on a,on a really outstanding career.
Tim Lomax (28:19):
Thank you very much, and I, I really do appreciate
you personally, your help ingetting me to the point where I
can, as the, the joke goesabout, the introverted engineer
talks to his shoes.
The extroverted engineer talksto your shoes.
That's where I feel like I'm at.
I can talk to people's shoesnow.
Bernie Fette (28:37):
We are happy to be of service.
Thank you again.
Tim Lomax (28:40):
Thank you very much.
Bernie Fette (28:43):
Lots of us in younger years may have had
visions of what we wanted to bewhen we grew up.
But a much smaller numberactually realized those
aspirations.
Of course, it does help to havea little direction from your
family, like when your mothertells you to go out and play on
a freeway.
(29:03):
Sometimes, that kind of guidancecan inspire a 46-year career,
along with an example forcountless young professionals to
follow.
Thanks for listening.
Please take just a minute togive us a review, subscribe and
share this episode.
And please join us next time fora conversation with Dug Begley.
(29:26):
Dug is the transportation writerfor the Houston Chronicle,
asking questions and tellingstories daily at a time when
both transportation and thenewspaper industry are
navigating historic changes.
Thinking Transportation is aproduction of the Texas A&M
Transportation Institute, amember of the Texas A&M
(29:48):
University System.
The show is edited and producedby Chris Pourteau.
I'm your writer and host, BernieFette.
Thanks again for listening.
We'll see you next time.
Hello and welcome back.
This is Thinking Transportation-- conversations about how we
get ourselves and the things weneed from one place to another.
I'm Bernie Fette with the TexasA&M Transportation Institute.
Workers in America spend anaverage of about four years
(00:35):
working for one employer beforeswitching jobs.
And then there are those whomeasure their time at the same
workplace in decades instead ofyears.
Our guest for this episode, TimLomax, is one of those who's
been in it for the long haul,sticking with TTI for more than
(00:55):
half his life.
Plenty of time to collectstories and form impressions
about how roadway travel haschanged since postage stamps
cost less than a quarter.
That's at least part of what wecan expect to hear about today
as Tim retires from TTI.
Tim, thanks for joining us.
Tim Lomax (guest) (01:17):
Absolutely.
Appreciate the opportunity.
Bernie Fette (01:19):
So how many years?
Tim Lomax (01:22):
This is my, uh, 46th year at TTI.
48 fall semesters.
Bernie Fette (01:29):
Okay.
Tim Lomax (01:30):
Including my, uh, undergrad.
Bernie Fette (01:32):
Just for a point of reference, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, 46years is more than 10 times the
average job tenure today.
Tim Lomax (01:43):
I have not been able to get a real job in all those
years.
And, so.
Bernie Fette (01:47):
Okay.
Well then, I'm curious aboutwhether or not your first job at
TTI is what you would call areal job.
Long before the glamor and fame.
Tim Lomax (01:57):
When I was a student worker making graphs on paper.
Bernie Fette (02:00):
Right on paper.
And some people I think would beinterested to know if it
involved a slide rule.
Tim Lomax (02:05):
Bernie Fette (02:09):
Okay.
Tim Lomax (02:10):
Yeah, no slide rules.
We'd, we'd moved on tocalculators since then.
Bernie Fette (02:14):
I see.
Okay.
Well that's, that's another goodpoint of reference.
Okay.
But seriously, actually, tell usa little bit more about it.
You said making calculations onpaper.
What was the nature of your veryfirst job?
At TTI,
Tim Lomax (02:27):
I was a student worker making graphs for reports
and for analysis.
I had graph paper of alldifferent kinds.
I had data sets that I wasplotting and trying to find
relationships, you know,straight lines through the data.
I think I did a little bit ofroadway design with a lot of
(02:48):
supervision because I was not aroadway designer at that point.
I remember a lot of calculationsand a lot of, uh, boxing of
tables.
Something you can doautomatically in Word now.
We actually had to take a penand draw a box around a, a table
that had been typed on thepaper.
Bernie Fette (03:06):
Well, joking aside, it says a lot about how
far the industry has come, howfar the research world has come,
too.
So did that first job tell you,wow, I'm gonna spend the rest of
my career and more than half ofmy life working at this place?
Or did that first job make youwonder?
(03:27):
What was I thinking?
Tim Lomax (03:30):
My career path is not normal in any reasonable
explanation of normal.
I knew I wanted to be atransportation engineer when I,
in the seventh grade, I wantedto work with buses and cars and
freeways.
My mother, uh, when I was youngtold me to go play on the
freeway and that's pretty muchmy career inspiration.
(03:51):
I was intrigued by what we weredoing at TTI, but I had assumed
that I was gonna be moving on toa big city and doing something
with a street or a highway or atransit system.
And towards the end of my senioryear, I was looking around for a
job and TTI offered me a job towork full-time and go to school
(04:13):
part-time, get a master's degreeand eventually a PhD.
Kept thinking I was gonna leaveand go to a big city, but
somehow never accomplished that.
But that's sort of where thecareer started.
Bernie Fette (04:25):
Seventh grade.
What was it that came to mind atthat point in your youth that
prompted you in that direction?
Tim Lomax (04:33):
I lived in Houston.
Houston was, uh, dramaticallyexpanding at that point and I
was intrigued by how peoplemoved around.
I was pretty good at math, soengineering was kinda something
I thought I would enjoy.
I didn't really like talking topeople and I knew that engineers
didn't really have to talk topeople.
They had to do calculations anddo designs.
(04:55):
So seemed like a, seemed like agood career path for me.
Bernie Fette (05:00):
And we can see how that particular aspiration
worked out in subsequent yearsthat we'll talk about a little
bit later.
But if we fast forward to whatmost people associate you with,
measuring traffic congestion,the Urban Mobility Report, I'm
guessing you had some options onwhat you would want to work on.
(05:20):
So I guess my question is whyfocus on that topic over others
that might merit attention?
Tim Lomax (05:28):
Well, the Texas Department of Transportation
came to us.
They said we'd like to be ableto talk to the public about the
effect of this, but we don'treally have a very good measure
that works for us as engineers,but also works for communication
of the general population.
Most of the performance measureswe used back then had very
(05:51):
technical sounding names andnumbers and it was hard to
relate them to anything.
And so they asked us to take alook at that challenge and come
up with something that theycould use to talk to the public.
I had access to some verylimited data sets, but we came
up with something that wethought would work.
(06:13):
It sort of used the startup badcongestion as a trigger.
And we had experience withHouston.
Houston in 1970 was a prettygood operating roadway system.
By 1980, it was one of the worstplaces in the country, so we
knew somewhere it went from goodto bad.
And so we started looking at awhole bunch of data and figured
(06:33):
out, you know, maybe mid decadewas about when that was.
So we went back and looked atthe performance measures to see
what the levels were and usedthose as a way to calibrate kind
of the start of bad congestion(air quotes, if you will).
And that became the start ofthis Urban Mobility Report
series.
We looked at the Texas citiesand then we, in another contract
(06:57):
expanded to cities in the southand the west and we kept getting
questions about how do wecompare with Chicago and New
York and and other places thatwere outside those sort of
suburban type designs.
And eventually expanded itnationally.
We kept changing the methodologyand the data sets to match the
(07:18):
available information, butthat's kinda where it started
this question of what are wegetting for what we're paying?
Bernie Fette (07:25):
For somebody who got into engineering in part so
he wouldn't have to talk topeople, you've talked to quite a
few people over the years aboutthis work in a variety of
situations and venues.
You've been on countless TV newsbroadcasts, newspaper articles,
testified before Congress,before the Texas House and the
(07:48):
Texas Senate, not to mentionspeeches to goodness knows how
many industry groups-- all aboutthis work or something related
to your work with mobilitymeasurement.
What do you think that all ofthat attention says about the
subject that you were talkingabout?
Tim Lomax (08:04):
Obviously people care about their travel times to
work.
Obviously congestion existedbefore we started measuring it
in our reports.
I think the approach that wedeveloped on the data side and
that you and others on thecommunication side helped us put
the information out.
I think that is a relativelyunique combination in the
(08:30):
research world or uh, eventransportation in general.
I think we have together, Idon't know that pioneered is the
right word, but certainly pushedthe state of the practice to a
place where it's more recognizednow that it's good to do the
work, but you also have to makeit understandable.
(08:51):
I think you and others, uh, butreally principally you deserve a
ton of credit for helping anengineer be able to talk to all
those people that you justlisted.
Technically, I always had mymother as my target audience.
If I could explain it to my mom,I felt like that's kind of who
our measures should be.
(09:12):
I know the first couple of yearsof doing the mobility report, I
would answer the phone call,answer the questions, and
whenever the reporter said, isthere anything else I should ask
you?
Or is there anything else youwant to tell me?
I would say no and hang up thephone just as fast as possible
because that limited my chancesof messing up
(09:33):
And that was my only goal was tonot mess up.
You and your coaching helped mebecome more comfortable and
understand that this is also myinterview.
It's not just the person who'sinterviewing me and I've got
some information that they wantand they want to convey to their
readers or listeners.
(09:53):
And it's important that I makesure that they understand what I
know to the best of my ability.
And I think that's been a hugepart of what we've been able to
do.
Yes, it's good technicalinformation.
I would put us up againstanybody, but the way we
communicated is also at the topof the field.
Bernie Fette (10:14):
And as you noticed, you became bilingual in
the process.
You learned how to speak Englishand engineer, right?
Tim Lomax (10:22):
work, but yeah,
Bernie Fette (10:28):
A lot of the people that we're talking about
that you've spoken to, whetherthey were reporters or people in
the industry, a lot of peoplehave placed a really high value
on the Urban Mobility Report.
It's regarded as a gold standardof sorts.
It's been called a definitivemeasure of what it measures by a
(10:49):
lot of respected research groupsand agencies around the country.
But you have not been withoutcritics along the way.
And several years ago when thosecritics emerged and were
attacking the research that youand your colleagues were doing,
do you recall, what was yourfirst reaction to the criticism
and what did you take away fromthe experience going forward in
(11:13):
subsequent years after that?
Tim Lomax (11:15):
Our first reaction was, what are their questions?
What are their problems?
Cuz I think that's really wherewe start almost everything.
We get a research project or aphone call or a question from
somebody.
It's always first you try tounderstand what the issue is
that they're bringing up.
And then you sort of, okay, welllet's parse that out, or let's
(11:39):
figure out what the details ofthe questions are and then let's
go back and look at what we'redoing and uh, see if the
criticisms that they're levelingsee what of that we need to take
back and rework or explainbetter or change or you know,
whatever.
It was particularly interestingbecause we had some of the same
(12:04):
questions they did.
We had been asking some of thesame questions about the data,
about the comparison standardswe were using, and we had been
changing our methods and ourmeasures to adapt to that.
So as we got into the criticismand sort of trying to figure out
what we could take from it, someof it was, yes, you're right,
(12:27):
and I can prove that you'reright because we've already
changed that.
And so the criticism was kind ofa few reports ago in general.
And the ones we were working onat that point, we, we had
adjusted some of our thinking.
Some other thinking was morealong the lines of the folks who
(12:49):
were criticizing the reportwanted us to be solutionists.
They wanted us to push aparticular strategy or a
particular solution.
And I think we had done enoughresearch both through the
literature and just talking topeople watching how policies and
programs evolve to know that toattack a congestion problem, you
(13:13):
really need a whole bunch ofdifferent strategies starting
off with, accept that there isgonna be some level of
congestion.
We're not gonna get rid of thetraffic congestion.
But working through the researchthat we had done, it was pretty
clear that a broad set ofstrategies was usually
important.
And applying them wherever theyare publicly accepted and
(13:36):
fundable is the best strategy.
Bernie Fette (13:40):
In recent years I know we have talked a little and
actually joked a little abouthow far the work with the Urban
Mobility Report has has comeover the years.
And in terms of trying tocommunicate those findings,
we've joked about how we startedoff with overnight packages with
Federal Express overnightpackages and how we doubled our
(14:02):
productivity from one year tothe next by adding a second fax
machine.
Tim Lomax (14:08):
A great leap forward.
Bernie Fette (14:10):
Yeah, great leap forward prior to the Internet
age.
But on the technical side with,if you could please speak in lay
terms as much as you can, howhas the Urban Mobility Report
and its related research,whatever orbits around it, how
has that advanced the most overthe years to become the more
(14:32):
precise and relied upon measurethat it has?
Tim Lomax (14:36):
Early on we were using traffic counts and roadway
capacities in a, as a fairlystandard, this was a fairly
standard approach, still is awell accepted industry norm.
In the mid-nineties, we got acontract from the National
(15:01):
Highway Research Program to lookat how you quantify congestion
and went through a bunch ofdifferent measures and data sets
and came up with, you know,really what we ought to be
measuring what people care aboutis travel time.
And at that point, we didn'treally have the data that we
needed to do that, but it waspretty clear that that was the
(15:24):
right measure.
And so our guidance was take themeasures that we have and turn
them into a travel time estimateor an extra travel time
estimate, which we call traveldelay.
So speaking about congestion interms of how much time is it
gonna take you to get somewhere,or how much extra time are you
(15:46):
gonna spend in traffic, or howmuch does that time vary from
day to day, I think was awatershed moment in our work.
We started to transition ourinformation into that format,
even though again, we didn'thave the data.
It wasn't until the early 2010sthat we finally had the kinds of
(16:11):
data sets that we have now.
We were starting to getinformation from cell phones and
cars and instrumented freeways,instrumented streets that could
tell you actual travel times.
And that's really where we'vetried to make the data advances
(16:31):
in the last several years, is wehave a bunch of really smart
people(not me) who know how touse the data in ways that can
help us tell the stories that wewant to tell that are relevant
to people.
How much extra time do I spendon the road?
What does it cost me?
(16:51):
How much is that time gonna varyfrom day to day?
How much time do truckers needto allow to, you know, make
their shipment on time?
Things like that.
Bernie Fette (17:01):
The next thing I think that naturally follows is
if given the improvements thatyou guys were able to implement
over the years with the new datasets and the new questions that
arose from sponsoring agencies,where do your colleagues, as you
depart, have the greatest roomfor improving this field of
(17:21):
research?
Tim Lomax (17:22):
We are getting more information about sort of
door-to-door ordriveway-to-driveway trips now
than we had in the past.
A lot of our information came tous almost as pieces of road.
So you get speeds along a streetor a freeway and you put all
(17:46):
those together and that tellsyou something about the trips
along that freeway.
Really what you'd like to haveare information about how people
and freight actually use thatnetwork.
Where they get on, where theyget off, uh, actual travel path
that they take.
(18:07):
A lot of this is being collectedeither on your phone or in your
connected car.
It gets anonymized and then sentto us in a data set.
That is a way for us tounderstand what those travel
paths are.
I think that's gonna give usmuch better insight into the
actual travel times that peopleare facing and over time how
(18:31):
those destinations might change.
You know, during Covid, peoplestopped going into the office as
much and there were more tripsto a lot of other destinations,
takeout food stores, parks,things like that.
The information that we can getfrom the travel between the trip
ends will be invaluable, notonly in helping us understand
(18:53):
the congestion problem, but alsounderstanding how we can help
agencies change thetransportation network to better
serve people.
And those desired trips.
Bernie Fette (19:05):
Special event traffic.
Tim Lomax (19:06):
Mm-hmm.
Bernie Fette (19:07):
You went from working primarily on freeway and
arterial street congestion tothe congestion that happens
around a football stadium with ahundred thousand people in it.
I know that that was another oneof what I guess you might call
milestones along the careerpath.
Can you give us a quickrecollection of how that came
(19:27):
together?
Tim Lomax (19:29):
Texas A&M was hosting Alabama in a football game in
2013.
This was the year after JohnnyManziel had won the Heisman.
We had beaten Alabama inAlabama.
They came to our place for a2:30 game.
Both teams were in the top five,it's gonna be a huge event.
So some of my colleagues and Igot together and we said, you
(19:49):
know, this is kind of a uniqueopportunity.
We're gonna be able to watchsome really, probably pretty
significant traffic.
Maybe we should learn somethingfrom this.
And so I rode a bicycle aroundon the game day and we got a
bunch of good observations andsome good ideas and put them
together.
And then we had a great team ofTTI people who helped put
(20:10):
together a plan.
But then as I started trying tofigure out what was going on, it
was very clear that there were alot of passionate, dedicated
people on campus and in thecommunity who could help us not
only understand what that planought to look like, but also how
to make it happen.
So we got a lot of support fromthe Convention and Visitors
Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce,the downtown Bryan merchants,
(20:33):
obviously all the transportationagencies.
But you know, there's uh,literally hundreds of people on
campus that make a game dayhappen.
And not just the event staff,but support staff, custodial
services, all the transportationpeople that drive buses or stand
at intersections.
And I've, I feel really lucky tohave gotten to know those people
(20:54):
and played a small role inhelping make game days better.
Bernie Fette (20:59):
And I think the experience from what I've heard,
relates directly to theimportance that you were raising
earlier about knowing how topackage information for a
particular audience.
Because goodness knows you hadquite a few different audiences
whenever you're dealing with anevent like that.
Tim Lomax (21:15):
Yeah, it's a cool challenge to take the kind of
pointy-headed ivory towercalculations and planning and
put it into action and then besomewhere you can watch what's
happening and when yourbrilliant idea doesn't work
spectacularly, within 30 secondsor 45 seconds, you can change
(21:36):
that brilliant idea to someother idea and, uh.
Bernie Fette (21:40):
Equally brilliant.
Tim Lomax (21:42):
Uh, you know, we're gonna put brilliant in air
quotes, how about that?
Bernie Fette (21:45):
Yeah.
Stretch that definition there.
Tim Lomax (21:47):
But, but being able to be involved and be trusted
enough that people would eitherdo what I said or say, you know,
Lomax, that's really stupid.
We tried that and that doesn'twork.
So you say, okay, well thenlet's think for a couple
seconds.
Okay, how about we do this?
Okay, well yeah, that soundslike it might work.
Okay, well let's do that.
Who do we need to call?
(22:07):
Who do we need to talk to?
What devices do we need?
You know, and, and sort ofworking through that
second-to-second,minute-to-minute change.
Again, I think the last 10 yearsof my career, I've just been in
it for the adrenaline rush thatI get.
And that's certainly a way toget the adrenaline flowing.
Bernie Fette (22:25):
Circling back for just a couple of minutes to that
first job that we talked about.
You were in graduate school, soyou had a number of faculty
members, perhaps othertransportation experts who were
in your orbit, I imagine whetheryou asked for their advice or
whether they just gave it to youbefore you asked.
I wonder what was the bestadvice that those early advisors
(22:50):
gave you 46 years ago?
Tim Lomax (22:53):
I think the best advice I had came from my
parents who basically taught meto ask questions, you know, some
version of question everything,and keep asking questions to
find out information.
It probably drove them crazy,but I think having an
encouragement of the learningprocess was kind of the start on
(23:16):
my research career.
And then the folks that Istudied under and worked with
were very supportive of that andgave me the guidance as well as
the support and the sense that Ishould pursue information and
(23:37):
pursue job opportunities orprojects that I was interested
in because that was gonna bewhat I would be the best at or,
or be the most dedicated to.
And I've really tried to livethat out.
I tell people that I think Ihave the best job on the planet
because if I can get people topay me to do what I wanna do, I
(23:59):
get to do what I wanna do.
I can't imagine a better jobthan that.
And I think if you're, you havea college degree, you have some
passionate interest in a topicand you can get to the position
that I'm in, you should continueto do that.
You should sort of hold yourselfto that kind of standard.
If you're not doing somethingyou enjoy and look forward to
(24:24):
coming to work, then you know,you should either talk to your
boss and see if there isn'tsomething, some other job or
some other version of whatyou're doing that would be more
interesting or find another job.
You know, life's way too shortto do stuff that you don't
really want to do if you havethose options, I feel lucky to
(24:45):
have had the options, but Ithink it's also been, uh, a lot
of encouragement to pursue whatI'm interested in.
Bernie Fette (24:52):
So fair to say that you give other students
today, the very same advice thatyou were given four and a half
decades ago?
Tim Lomax (25:00):
Seems to have worked out well for me.
So
Bernie Fette (25:04):
Relatively timeless.
Let's wrap up with a questionthat you were actually referring
to earlier about when thatreporter asks you.
"Well, is there anything elsethat I should be asking you?"
Well, before you follow thatinitial instinct that you had
years ago,
(25:24):
interview.
I'll just ask you, is thereanything else that I should have
asked you, any parting thoughtsthat you would like to share?
Tim Lomax (25:31):
I have been incredibly lucky to be at, uh,
TTI and working with people likeyou and Chris and Dave Schrank,
Shawn Turner, Bill Eisele, have,have made the last several years
of my career really enjoyable.
They've allowed me to kind ofcontinue to do what I want to
do.
I'm very excited that Deb Alberthas taken over the kind of local
(25:53):
work and the special eventtransportation stuff that I have
been doing.
But I've worked with so manygreat people at TTI and the
sponsors, the folks that haveasked us interesting questions
and trusted our judgment.
Again, I can't imagine a betterjob.
I think if there's one piece ofadvice that I've given people is
(26:15):
to be active in looking forsolutions, and that sort of goes
for research reports, but alsoif you're standing in a street
directing traffic and thetraffic isn't going the way you
think it ought to go, change it.
You know, be aggressive with ourknowledge, with our deployment
(26:36):
of our information.
Make sure that you package theinformation in a way the
audience can understand it, butbe persistent and consistent
about making that case, becauseI think there's a lot of
transportation people that haveinformation that the public is
really interested in.
We just gotta make sure that weput it in a form where they can
(26:57):
consider it and, you know, make,uh, informed choices.
I think that's really the bestoutcome of our research is that
we inform the choices thatpeople make.
Bernie Fette (27:07):
What's next?
Tim Lomax (27:09):
I'm still looking for opportunities to get involved in
the special eventtransportation, transportation
operations.
I enjoy the adrenaline of fixingtraffic in a very real sense,
both the planning and the, uh,day-to-day operation of a
football game or a basketballgame or a auto race or whatever.
(27:31):
I really enjoy that, but I'malso gonna spend a lot more time
with my grandkids.
The last several years we'vebeen able to spend more time
with them and probably, uh, gowatch a lot more baseball,
soccer games and gymnastics andvolleyball games.
Bernie Fette (27:49):
We've been visiting with Tim Lomax and
reflecting on his 46 years ofservice in transportation
research and leadership at TTI.
Tim, thanks for sharing yourmemories and your insights with
us, and congratulations on astellar career, particularly
that part about gettingcomfortable talking to people
(28:10):
when that was one of the thingsthat you had as a career goal to
avoid all these years.
So congratulations again on a,on a really outstanding career.
Tim Lomax (28:19):
Thank you very much, and I, I really do appreciate
you personally, your help ingetting me to the point where I
can, as the, the joke goesabout, the introverted engineer
talks to his shoes.
The extroverted engineer talksto your shoes.
That's where I feel like I'm at.
I can talk to people's shoesnow.
Bernie Fette (28:37):
We are happy to be of service.
Thank you again.
Tim Lomax (28:40):
Thank you very much.
Bernie Fette (28:43):
Lots of us in younger years may have had
visions of what we wanted to bewhen we grew up.
But a much smaller numberactually realized those
aspirations.
Of course, it does help to havea little direction from your
family, like when your mothertells you to go out and play on
a freeway.
(29:03):
Sometimes, that kind of guidancecan inspire a 46-year career,
along with an example forcountless young professionals to
follow.
Thanks for listening.
Please take just a minute togive us a review, subscribe and
share this episode.
And please join us next time fora conversation with Dug Begley.
(29:26):
Dug is the transportation writerfor the Houston Chronicle,
asking questions and tellingstories daily at a time when
both transportation and thenewspaper industry are
navigating historic changes.
Thinking Transportation is aproduction of the Texas A&M
Transportation Institute, amember of the Texas A&M
(29:48):
University System.
The show is edited and producedby Chris Pourteau.
I'm your writer and host, BernieFette.
Thanks again for listening.
We'll see you next time.
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