HBA Specto Incorporated

HBA Specto Incorporated specializes in modeling and analysis for transportation and urban planning. It is set up to make available the specialized and complementary skills and abilities of three widely experienced and well-known transportation and urban system modellers. It provides strategic guidance and support to larger modeling and analysis teams and also develops and provides modeling tools and undertakes specific analysis. HBA Specto Incorporated continues work that has been ongoing for over 8 years under Hunt Analytics Incorporated and T. J. Modelling Ltd.

Staff Profiles:

John Douglas Hunt, Ph.D., P.Eng.: (jdh@hbaspecto.com): Doug is an internationally recognized and widely published expert in land use and transport interaction modeling. He has about 15 years of experience in transportation demand modeling and land use transport interaction modeling in Europe, the United States and Canada. He has assisted in the successful development of multimodal transportation models or land use and transportation interaction models for various cities, including: London, Edinburgh, Dortmund, Naples, Dublin, San Diego, Sacramento, Phoenix, Edmonton and Calgary. He was a special modeling advisor to Union Railways, the British Rail subsidiary developing the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, for 4 years. He has also worked on regional transportation and land use models for Oregon, Sweden, Southeast England and Central Chile. His special expertise is in the design and calibration of these models, developing them so that they can be used to examine policy alternatives involving such things as infrastructure development, alterations in land use regulations, changes in transportation conditions (including operations, tariffs and user costs) and new economic and fiscal arrangements. His experience in both private consulting and university teaching and research make him a powerful communicator with a broad understanding of both the technical issues and the practical constraints involved in real-world modeling work. Doug is a professor of Transportation Engineering at the University of Calgary and president of Hunt Analytics Incorporated.

John E. Abraham, Ph.D., P.Eng.: (jea@hbaspecto.com): John has expertise in developing and calibrating models to provide computer simulations that are both accurate and practical for analyzing policy and scenarios. His development and use of models has focused on understanding and measuring the relationship between the transportation system and the larger community, and modeling these relationships in land use transport interaction models. He is an expert on survey techniques for understanding preferences, measuring tradeoff rates and predicting behavior. Surveying projects include surveys to predict mode choice in Phoenix, Ohio, Calgary, Edmonton and Kathmandu (Nepal), and surveys to understand broad citizen preferences in Calgary and Edmonton. Modeling projects include land use and transportation models of the Sacramento region and the State of Oregon, a model of the demand for passenger traffic on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, a model of cyclists preferences for Edmonton a mode choice model for Kathmandu, Nepal and a review of the land use model of Auckland, New Zealand. As a volunteer, John has worked with stakeholder groups and community associations, and is chair of the Calgary Alternative Transportation Co-operative. John is also president of T. J. Modelling Ltd.

Alan T. Brownlee, Ph.D., P.Eng.: (atb@hbaspecto.com): Alan has over 25 years of experience in both Canada and the UK. He specializes in the areas of travel forecasting, assessment of transportation needs, and development of transportation plans for urban areas. He has been responsible for the completion of a variety of transportation planning projects in Canada and the UK He is recognized as one of the leading practitioners in practical travel demand modeling in Canada, and has co-authored several papers on the application of these models in the urban Canadian context. In particular, he has had direct responsibility for the development and use of a significant number of multi-modal regional travel models, sub-area traffic assignment models, and corridor traffic microsimulation assignment models. The sub-area and corridor traffic assignment models have been used to assess detail traffic operation of existing and proposed developments and alternative network configurations. This work has included interaction with members of the public and elected officials. In addition, he is recognized as a leader in the field of estimation of vehicle emissions. He is Co-Chair of the Alberta Clean Air Strategic Alliance Vehicle Emissions Team, and is an advisor to Alberta Infrastructure on transportation climate change issues. Alan is also General Supervisor of Forecasting and Assessment at the City of Edmonton, and is president of his own consulting company.

Selected Academic Papers