Provider/Agency reconciliation

[marie-x]

Reference documents:

1. Github Issue
2. Spreadsheet Comparison
3. Notes
4. State machine diagram
5. Presentation Slides
6. Video of Presentation Password: 1B&1*2E?

[schnuerle]

Thanks for this pull request for the API Reconciliation work! We'll discuss together on tomorrow's webinar - the audience is our working groups, but anyone can participate.

[marie-x]

Note: there are several unresolved naming issues to be considered, including unavailable vs. non_operational, and on_trip vs. in_trip vs. trip state.

[thekaveman]

Suggestions:

1. Move the shared content into General Information rather than another document.

2. In the Vehicle Events table, list the Prior state column first, to show the state flow from left -> right.

[schnuerle]

For the wording of on_trip vs. in_trip vs. trip state:

trip is argued because it is what is there now. on_trip is argued since it better aligns with the other changes in this PR.

My opinion is since this a breaking change anyway, the on_trip wording makes more sense for cities looking at it. Also echoed by Jascha, Max, and Jean Kao from Populus on the webinar.

Please leave a comment here if you have a differing opinion so we can discuss before on_trip gets approved.

[schnuerle]

For the wording of unavailable vs. non_operational, it's mostly semantics and what word fits better in the defined situations.

I believe unavailable is the way to go since it's a bit broader in meaning.

Please leave a comment here if you have a differing opinion so we can discuss before unavailable gets approved.

[thekaveman]

On one of the earlier Reconciliation calls, we talked about the idea of creating a mapping/transformation from the old style to this new proposed style - to help those with existing data get an idea of how to migrate. It doesn't seem like it should be part of this PR and live in the spec forever; maybe a Wiki page makes more sense? I'm imagining a plain language description + SQL script or similar, but open to any ideas.

[schnuerle]

On one of the earlier Reconciliation calls, we talked about the idea of creating a mapping/transformation from the old style to this new proposed style - to help those with existing data get an idea of how to migrate. It doesn't seem like it should be part of this PR and live in the spec forever; maybe a Wiki page makes more sense? I'm imagining a plain language description + SQL script or similar, but open to any ideas.

I recall that too. I think a Wiki page is the place to accomplish this. At minimum a description of how to upgrade your old fields to align with these new fields - what gets created, copied, removed, etc. A few diagrams/charts would help.

Some SQL may be in order though I think it would be generic since we don't know what everyone is running. Maybe the above would be enough though.

[mobilitygirl]

Re: non-operational vs. unavailable

From our conversations with cities, non-operational is the term that the majority of transportation planners prefer for this vehicle state.

From talking with most public agencies, they need a term for which:
x + y = total vehicles in my public right of way

Many cities find the terms available and unavailable to be confusing because the majority of people naturally assume that available + unavailable = vehicles in the public right of way, because available and unavailable are literal antonyms of each other. (But this natural interpretation is incorrect based on current terms).

Hence the recommendation to use operational and non-operational after conversations facilitated by Toole Design and Populus with public agencies. These vehicle states are are subsets of "Deployed" vehicles, and are also consistent with what most other transportation systems would use to define such vehicles (e.g. the Federal Transit Administration, FAA, etc.)

[mobilitygirl]

The cities and non-profit organizations that reviewed and participated in the dialogue that led to the recommendation for the terms operational and non-operational include:

City of Bellevue, City of Tallahassee, Denver Regional Council of Governments, Miami-Dade County, City of Chicago, City of Portland, City of Seattle, Colorado Department of Transportation, District Department of San Diego Association of Governments

Transportation Sustainability Research Center at UC Berkeley, National League of Cities, New Urban Mobility Alliance, Shared-Use Mobility Center, OECD International Transport Forum, National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Their participants were primarily transportation planners, policymakers, and research scientists (in the case of research organizations), who are generally less represented in conversations on GitHub.

[schnuerle]

Ready to merge to dev. Any objections please reply today.

[marie-x]

@billdirks I would propose deferring changes to support unauthorized movement to 1.1, as no specific proposal is on the table, and the community would not have time to digest it.

[billdirks]

@Karcass Deferring to 1.1 sounds good to me. This is now being tracked in #527 (Thank you @thekaveman!)

[schnuerle]

Thanks, looks good to move forward.

[schnuerle]

Thanks for the final tweaks. We will get the rest resolved in the other PRs/issues.