Charles Allen (User Spotlight May 2024)

Josh Alpers · May 2, 2024

CHARLES ALLEN

Charles Allen
Education: Brigham Young University, BS, MS Civil Engineering

Current Employment: Parametrix - Transportation Engineer

Greatest Interests about Travel Demand Modeling and Forecasting: Forecasting is the foundation of so many projects that leads to multi-million-dollar decisions. Yet, it’s an imperfect science and the accuracy of its outputs are more akin to long-range weather forecasting than we would like to admit. He enjoys the challenge of taking imprecise inputs and assumptions and communicating results.

Favorite Modeling Project(s): Park City TMP - Had to build their own Park City model from scratch, develop zones and land use statistics, and develop dynamic routing in Vissim. Fun scenarios such as gateway corridors and emergency evacuation.

Valuable Resources, Tools or Software: He admires the online GIS tools our MPO friends have created to summarize model inputs and outputs. They are a great resource for looking at the big picture.

Hobbies and Interests: He enjoys hiking and playing board games with his kids, and chainsawing. He took up skiing four years ago and it’s been fun to discover why people are so crazy about it.