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The purpose of this project was to compare the cost of transportation engineering design services provided by private contractors versus services provided by state transportation agency staff for the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LaDOTD). Due to shrinking budgets, staff cuts, and a trend toward privatization, state transportation agencies now outsource the majority of the services they provide. The merits of doing so, however, have been difficult to discern for lack of “apples-to-apples” comparisons. For engineering design services, this problem is particularly acute due to the uniqueness of many projects (e.g., a bridge over the Mississippi river). A simulation approach was used in this study to make “apples-to-apples” comparisons for 39 design projects, 22 in-house projects and 17 consultant projects. For each in-house design project, the cost was estimated had the work been done by a consulting firm. Similarly, for each consultant design project, the cost was estimated had the work been done by in-house staff. The result of the study was that in-house design costs were cheaper by an average of 17 to 19 percent.

The purpose of this project was to develop a systematic, objective procedure to evaluate the potential to outsource functions and activities currently performed by the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LaDOTD). A computer-based model was developed which evaluates the qualitative and cost aspects of contracting out activities and functions. The model was applied to three activities in the LaDOTD; highway markers, highway striping, and maintenance of rest areas. The results were in line with the expectations of officials who have experienced actual outsourcing of these activities. The model was constructed so that the perspectives it considers and the criterion on which outsourcing is assessed may be altered by the user to allow its use in a variety of settings.

Purpose — A new method of collecting hurricane evacuation data using time-dependent stated choice is developed and evaluated in this study.

Methodology/approach — Hypothetical storms are presented in a video in a sequence of scenarios showing prevailing conditions at discrete points in time as each storm approaches land. Respondents are exposed to nine hypothetical storms representing a range of hurricane characteristics. One of the hypothetical storms is secretly the same as an actual storm the respondents experienced in the past and for which they are required to report their behaviour in a revealed preference survey.

Findings — Stated and actual behaviour was compared and general agreement was found between what people say they would do and what they did. The revealed preference (RP) data was supplemented with time-dependent data from official sources and hurricane evacuation demand models estimated on this enhanced RP data, as well as on a combination of the enhanced RP and time-dependent stated choice (SC) data. When the models were applied to a different data set than the ones on which the models were calibrated, the combined time-dependent RP/SC model performed slightly better than the enhanced RP model. Detailed accounting revealed that time-dependent SC data is 25 percent more expensive to collect than enhanced RP data, although some of this cost may be due to the first-time collection of this type of data.