Ed Hard

TTI Research Scientist
Division Head

Education

• B.S., Geology, Texas A&M University, 1986

Short Biography

Mr. Hard is Program Manager for the Texas A&M Transportation Institute's Transportation Planning Program in College Station. He has over 20 years of experience as a professional transportation planner, including 10 years in the public sector, 9 years in university research, and 2 years in consulting. His areas of expertise include travel surveys to support urban transportation models and corridor management and preservation.

Mr. Hard serves as TTI's manager and coordinating researcher for the conduct and analysis travel surveys in Texas, which has one of the most active travel survey programs in the United States. He oversees the development of survey designs, methods and development of bid specifications for household, work place, and commercial vehicle travel surveys. Since 2001, he has been involved in the management, data review, and/or analysis of origin-destination travel surveys for all Texas' urban areas as well as two statewide border crossing surveys.

Mr. Hard has lead research on state-of-the-practice methods for conducting external surveys on high volume facilities using intercept and video license capture methods. He co-authored Guidelines and Recommendations for Household and External Surveys and has co-instructed NHI Course Development and Implementation of Travel Surveys. In April of 2010, he traveled to Beijing, China to serve on an international panel for the development of a household travel survey to support travel demand models for this city of 20 million. More recently, he developed and will moderate a session on Current and Emerging Practices in Collecting and Estimating External Travel at TRBs 2011 meeting in Washington, DC.

Mr. Hard has experience in coordinating transportation and land use planning as a researcher and a practitioner. He's led research projects in the areas of corridor management and preservation, DOT/local coordination in the land development process, and preserving the functionality/asset value of highways. In each of these efforts, Mr. Hard has developed guidebooks and outreach workshops as a means to coordinate DOT and local planning policies and activities. In 2008, he served as lead author on Guidelines on Corridor Management in Texas, and more recently he led the development of a Guidebook on Preserving and Enhancing the Functionality of Highways in Texas. Since 2005, Mr. Hard has conducted over 45 outreach workshops on corridor management and DOT/local involvement in development review throughout the state of Texas.

Mr. Hard has years of hands-on experience in the development and implementation of transportation plans and development ordinances. He has authored and applied municipal plans and ordinances on access management, street design standards, bikeways, streetscape, and corridor overlay districts. Prior to his current position, he was the Transportation Planner for the City of College Station, Texas - home to Texas A&M University - where he was responsible for the city's short- and long-range transportation planning function and land development proposals.