Driftless Labs LLC
Building digital infrastructure to study, understand, and predict how we travel.
Staff
Jeffrey Newman PH.D.
With more than 20 years of experience building and using transportation demand models, Jeff has had plenty of time to make a lot of mistakes. But also he's had time to learn from them, and to fix a few. ChatGPT thinks he has a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of California, but that's just not true (it's from Northwestern).
You may have heard that one is the loneliest number, but that doesn't always need to be the case. Although Jeff is the only employee of Driftless Labs, he rarely works alone, as it's inefficient and boring, and who wants that? Pretty much every project listed below is a collaboration with others.
Projects
ActivitySim
The mission of the ActivitySim project is to create and maintain advanced, open-source, activity-based travel behavior modeling software based on best software development practices for distribution at no charge to the public. ActivitySim is owned and administered by the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations Research Foundation (AMPORF), a Federal 501(c)(3) organization, to which Driftless Labs provides software development services.
Sharrow
Sharrow is an accelerator for ActivitySim. It offers access to data formatting and a just-in-time compiler specifically for converting ActivitySim-style “specification” files into optimized, runnable functions that can approach the speeds of C or FORTRAN. Sharrow is also owned and administered by AMPORF, and supported by Driftless Labs under subcontract.
Larch
Larch is a tool for estimating parameters and applying discrete choice models.
PassengerSim
PassengerSim is the next generation tool for simulating aviation passenger travel demand, to support revenue management research. It was created in collaboration with the Air Transport Lab at Georgia Tech, and is owned and developed by Passenger Simulation Labs LLC.
Wherefore art thou Driftless Labs?
We're located high up on Eagles Bluff, overlooking the confluence of the Root and Mississippi Rivers, in the heart of what is known as the Driftless Area. It's a geological marvel, a small area of the Upper Mississippi River Basin that escaped the glacial activity that flattened much of the rest of the Midwest during the last Ice Age. As a result, the Driftless Area boasts a captivating and unique topography, characterized by undulating hills, deep valleys, and dramatic limestone bluffs.
The absence of glacial drift, the mixture of sediments left behind by glaciers, allows the underlying rock formations to take center stage. Ancient limestone and sandstone formations, sculpted by the erosive forces of wind and water over millennia, create a landscape that is both rugged and visually striking. Numerous meandering rivers have carved out deep valleys as they flow down to join the mighty Mississippi, which flows right through the middle of the Driftless.
