Datastore documentation descriptions lacking

[bettinardi]

I have been attempting to use VE output (datastore) to summarize user costs. I am encountering household attributes like AveVehCostPM which is described as - Average out-of-pocket cost in dollars per mile of vehicle travel. However, there are many costs in VE, and I'm struggling to reverse engineer / understand exactly what costs are included in this variable.

Internal understanding at ODOT is this: Out-of-pocket costs include the energy, [Maintenance, Repair, & Tires], road use taxes (including EV surcharge and optional calculation of fee to fully recover road costs), work/non-work parking, PAYD insurance, input share of carbon and other social costs, as well as CarService fees by the household.

However, we are not 100% confident that this is the case. Datastore documentation should be review and revised such that a non-developer (a person that doesn't know the module code intimately) can feel confident they know how to use and apply the results.

[jrawbits]

Thanks for posting the issue, Alex! We'll drill into it and have it included in the documentation. There is currently a big task going on to organize and streamline the documentation, both internal and user-facing, and I’m thinking I’ll enlarge this request to make sure that every module spec (Inp, Get, Set) is well-document with respect to what is included in it.

[mrspeel]

Great to have fresh set of user audience eyes on this.
A couple related minor issues in the Database_documentation folder/files I'd like to see fixed:

• In some cases UNITS filed and description field conflict. UNITS field is correct. Can we fix? do we need even units in the Description field?
• In household.csv entry...I think "savings" should be deleted.
  Name=OwnCost, Type=currency, Units=USD, Description=Annual household vehicle ownership cost (depreciation, finance, insurance, taxes) savings in dollars

OwnCost	currency	USD	Annual household vehicle ownership cost (depreciation, finance, insurance, taxes) savings in dollars

OwnCost	currency	USD	Annual household vehicle ownership cost (depreciation, finance, insurance, taxes) savings in dollars