Transportation Engineer II

The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG or simply COG) is an independent, nonprofit association that brings area leaders together to address major regional issues in the District of Columbia, suburban Maryland, and Northern Virginia. The National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (NCRTPB or simply TPB) is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The TPB is also one of several policy boards that operate at COG. COG is the administrative agent for the TPB, and the TPB is staffed by COG’s Department of Transportation Planning (DTP). COG has a staff of about 120 employees, half of whom work in the DTP. COG was founded in 1957. The TPB was created in 1965 and became associated with COG in 1966.

The team is responsible for developing, maintaining, applying, and improving the TPB’s family of regional travel demand forecasting models. At any given time, the TPB staff maintains at least two travel demand models:

• The adopted, production-use travel model
• One or more developmental travel models (for potential future production use)

The team is currently divided into two groups: Model Development and Model Application. The mission of the Model Development group is to develop, maintain, and improve the TPB’s regional travel demand forecasting models. The mission of the Model Application group is to apply the production-use travel model to regional and corridor studies, including the development of the region’s Long-Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) and an assessment of air quality impacts of the LRTP, using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) model. Transportation networks are an important input to the regional model, and both groups support network development.

COG/TPB seeks to hire a transportation engineer to work in its Model Application group, to be filled at the Transportation Engineer II level. The Transportation Engineer II position will serve under the direction of a Senior Engineer or Principal Engineer and will focus on a variety of challenging technical tasks.  COG/TPB staff develops a Long-Range Transportation Plan and participates in the air quality conformity analysis of the plan and State Implementation Plan (SIP) activities. Staff applies an array of technical tools that include the travel demand model and MOVES mobile emissions model to conduct these technical analyses. These same tools are often used in scenario planning work, alternatives analyses conducted for TPB’s members, and greenhouse gas planning activities. The position will be concerned with preparing, executing and analyzing the variety of models that the TPB staff supports. This should be an exciting time to join the COG/TPB staff, since we have just begun the development of our next-generation travel demand forecasting model, referred to as the Generation-3, or Gen3, Model. We are seeking someone who is passionate about learning, improving technical skills, public service, and making significant contributions that will improve the agency and the region. We offer a friendly, collegial work environment, challenging technical work, with competitive pay and benefits, in the Nation’s Capital.

 

Minimum Qualifications

• Transportation Engineer II:  Either 1) Master’s degree in transportation engineering, civil engineering, transportation planning, urban planning, computer science, or a related field. OR 2) Bachelor’s degree in a related or non-related field and two years of applicable work experience. OR 3) Any combination of education, experience, and training that is equivalent to one of the two preceding qualifications, as demonstrated by college-level courses in areas such as Mathematics, Operations Research, Quantitative Analysis, Statistics, and Computer Modeling.
• Ability to work cooperatively in a team environment within and between COG departments.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with an ability to interpret technical findings and share them with general audiences.
• Solid verbal and written communications skills.
• Strong familiarity with standard business software (Excel, Word and PowerPoint).
• Experience with the standard four-step urban transportation planning process and theory.
• Familiarity with emissions modeling (EPA’s Mobile or MOVES mobile emissions models) and theory.
• Interest in regional planning, air quality planning and travel demand modeling.

Ideal Candidate (one or more of these)

• Passionate about learning, improving technical skills, public service, and making significant contributions that will improve the agency and the region.
• Ability to be a change agent, particularly regarding technical methods.
• Familiarity with both trip-based and activity-based travel demand forecasting models.
• Experience with travel demand forecasting software, such as Cube Voyager.
• Experience with EPA’s MOVES model.
• Experience with scenario planning and greenhouse gas estimation tools (e.g., VisionEval).
• Experience with geographic information system (GIS) software, such as ArcGIS or QGIS.
• Experience with one or more computer programming languages, such as with R, Python, and Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET)
• Knowledge of database management systems (DBMSs).

Examples of Work

• Development of travel demand model and MOVES model inputs, such as the transportation networks and land use data, for air quality planning, project planning and scenario planning activities.
• Running and updating the regional travel model.
• Analysis and troubleshooting of travel demand model, MOVES model, and other model output in support of the air quality conformity analysis, long-range plan performance assessment and scenario/project planning.
• Preparation of projects and maps using geographic information system (GIS) software.
• Analysis of key data sets, such as the household travel survey, or on-board transit surveys.
• Writing technical memoranda and reports.
• Becoming knowledgeable with federal regulations and guidance pertaining to air quality planning.
• Analysis of transportation emission reduction measures (TERMs).
• Making presentations to the Technical Committee, Travel Forecasting Subcommittee (TFS) and other related committees.
• Supporting data requests from outside parties related to the regional travel demand model and EPA’s MOVES model, and/or their inputs.