Starting in December 2014, Javier Revilla a Volgenau School of Engineering student, began his internship with Mason's Facilities Department.
"This was my introduction into the complex world of transportation engineering," said Revilla. One of his first tasks was to perform a traffic count of the campus, covering all entrances and exits. While working on this task he says became immersed in everything transportation, including traffic patterns and analysis and when he finished, he decided that the next logical step would be to create a traffic pattern for the campus.
"Part of this process is to determine an origin destination estimate. When researching this I learned that the process of estimation is relatively primitive and boils down to two different options. Neither of which is accurate and/or simple. This motivated me to develop my own method of estimation."
Revilla's long-term goal is to focus his career in mass transit structures. "My project played a fundamental role in my education of transit, how it works and most importantly how to predict its future pattern," said Revilla. "This project is my first step in achieving my future goals in transit."
A version of this article appeared on the USRP Blogspot in April 2015.