Chapter-3

Transportation Modeling
Mesay S.
How do you conceptualize transport
problems?
CLASS ACTIVITY

Part-1
Mention a set of problems in transportation and discuss on how they
can be formulated scientifically. (5 minutes)
Part-2
Discuss a method of studying these problems to arrive at solutions.
(10 minutes)
Transport Modeling
What is Modeling?
Reality Model
Modeling: Definition & Process
• Mathematical Model:

• Y = f(x,a):
• Y – dependent variable
• X – independent variable
• a – parameter/constant
 Why do we need models?
Uses of Transport Models

Performance
Factor Sensitivity Economic Analysis
Forecasting
Analysis Analysis Appraisal &
Optimization
Characteristics of Transport Problems
• Transport demand is derived; this causes differentiation
Sensitivity Factors

• Time

• Price

• Comfort

• Distance

• Age

• Physical ability
 Characteristics of Transport Problems
• Transport demand is spatial.
• It is the distribution of activities over space that makes for transport demand.

• Transport is a service and not a good.

• Therefore, it is not possible to stock it.

• The demand-supply market in transport is dynamic.

• A good deal of the demand for transport is concentrated on a few hours of the
day.
 Characteristics of Transport Problems
• Different owners for fixed assets and the mobile units.
• Infrastructure owner/manager ≠ Transport operator

• Transport infrastructure is lumpy.

• No meaning to half a runway or one-third of a railway station.
• Infrastructure projects take a long time to carry out and have significant
expenses.

• Transport investment has an important political role.

• Transport services come with side effects: accidents, pollution and

environmental degradation.
 Basic Terminology (Reading Assignment)
Term Definition
Activity An activity occurs at the end of every trip and reflects the trip purpose, that is, what the trip maker did at the
trip destination. Activities are categorized according to schemes such as subsistence/maintenance/discretionary
or work/shop/social/etc.
Calibration Calibration is the fitting of a model to observed data, primarily by adjusting model parameters. In travel
forecasting, the terms estimation and calibration often have been used interchangeably.
Centroid A defined point within a TAZ from which all trips are assumed to start or end. It should be located to reflect the
center of activity in a TAZ and not necessarily the geographic center.

Corridor A linear study area along one or more transportation facilities for which
estimates of travel demand and system performance are desired.

Cordon Line An abstract line defining the external boundary of a study area.

Estimation Estimation, part of the model specification process, is the formal computation of the parameters for a
hypothesized model, to maximize the likelihood of fitting observed data.
 Basic Terminology (Reading Assignment)
Term Definition
External A "door" on the cordon line of a study area corresponding to major entry and exit points for external trips
Station through, into, and out of the study area.

Home-based A classification for trips that either begin and/or end at a trip maker’s home regardless of the origin and
destination, the home location is always the production for home-based trips; the other end is always
the attraction
Home-based A trip with one end at home and the other end at a non-work location.
Other

Home-based A trip with one end at work and the other end at home.
Work

Household A fundamental sampling unit for travel surveys, the household (HH) is a behavioral unit of one or more
individuals who share a dwelling unit, resources (e.g., income, automobiles), and travel responsibilities.
Interaction among HH members influences travel and activity behavior.
Impedance Impedance, a computed measure of the disincentive to travel due to spatial separation, is a composite function
of travel time (often split by access, in-vehicle, and egress time), travel cost, and/or distance.
 Basic Terminology (Reading Assignment)
Term Definition
Incidence Matrix An efficient means of storing network topology relationships, including node-link, link-path, and path-
OD incidence matrices.

External Trip A trip with either its origin or its destination located outside of the study area. The external trip end is
assigned to an external station.

Internal Trip A trip with both its origin and its destination located inside of the study area. If both trip ends are
outside the study area, it is a through trip.

Inter-zonal Trip A trip between two different analysis zones.

Intra-zonal Trip A trip with both origin and destination in the same zone. In trip assignment, intra-zonal trips are not
loaded on the network

Land Use The primary activity for which a parcel of land is used (residential, commercial, industrial, open space,
undeveloped, etc.).
 Basic Terminology (Reading Assignment)
Term Definition
Link A fundamental element of a transportation network defined by a starting and an ending node and
having attributes such as length, travel time and/or speed, and capacity.

Mode A means of conveyance between origins and destinations, modes are motorized (cars and other private
vehicles, buses, rail transit) and nonmotorized (walking, bikes).

Network A graphical and/or mathematical representation of a region’s transportation infrastructure and services,
comprising links and nodes and their corresponding characteristics.

Node A point joining two or more links in a transportation network, and having attributes such as spatial
coordinates, turn penalties and prohibitions.

Non-Home-Based A classification for trips which neither begin nor end at a trip maker’s residence (home). The origin of a
NHB trip is also the production; the destination of a NHB trip is also the attraction.

OD Matrix A trip table in origin / destination format

 Basic Terminology (Reading Assignment)
Term Definition
Origin The location or zone where a trip begins

Parameter A constant describing a population property utilized in a model development process.

Path A sequence of links and nodes connecting an origin to a destination in a network. Used interchangeably
with route.
Peak Hour For a transportation facility or network, the hour of the day during which the maximum traffic volume
occurs.

Person-Trip A single trip by a single person. The output of trip generation is measured in person-trips. On the other
hand, a vehicle-trip is a single trip by a vehicle, regardless of the number of occupants in the vehicle.

Prediction A general term for the estimation of the value of a variable of interest in an unknown situation.
 Basic Terminology (Reading Assignment)
Term Definition
Production The location or zone responsible for a trip occurring but also used for the produced trip itself: a zone is a
production for N trip productions). Home-based trips, by definition, have their production in the zone
containing the household, regardless of the origin and destination of the trip. The productions for non-
home-based trips must be allocated to the NHB trip's origin zone.
Route A path through a network; a series of links and nodes connecting an origin and a destination. Used
interchangeably with path.

Study Area A defined region within which estimates of travel demand and system performance are desired.

Traffic A defined zone for travel forecasting and traffic simulation studies, represented in the network by a
Analysis Zone centroid.

Transportation The Transportation System constitutes the networks (modes, links, nodes,
System etc.) connecting a region's Activity System.

Validation An independent test of a calibrated model's predictive capabilities using data that was not used in
estimating or calibrating the model. The objective is to verify that the model can replicate observed
system performance.
 Data Requirements

 Socio-economic data: Information regarding the socio-economic characteristics of the study area. Important ones
include income, vehicle ownership, family size, etc.

 Travel surveys: Origin-destination travel survey at households and traffic data from cordon lines. Former data
include the number of trips made by each member of the household, the direction of travel, destination, the cost of the travel,
etc. The latter include the traffic flow, speed, and travel time measurements.

 Land use inventory: This includes data on the housing density at residential zones, establishments at commercial
and industrial zones.

 Network data: This includes data on the transport network and existing inventories. Transport network data includes
road network, traffic signals, junctions etc. The service inventories include data on public and private transport networks.
 Data Requirements: Socio-Economic Data

• Household size
Why are these important?
• Vehicle Ownership

• Income
 Data Requirements: Travel surveys
• Origin-destination travel survey at households
• Number of trips made by each member of the household
• Direction of travel
• Destination
• Cost of the travel, etc. Why are these important?
• Traffic data from cordon lines.
• Traffic flow
• Speed
• Travel time
 Data Requirements: Land Use Inventory
·Inventory of:

· Houses

· Commercial establishments
Why are these important?
· Service establishments

· Industrial activity, etc.

Mathematics for Modeling

• Some Statistics Do you need some

• Regression Analysis background material to
study?
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
Some basic terms (recap):
• Traffic Analysis Zone (TAZ): a socio-economically uniform region used as a unit of traffic

analysis.

• Home-Based (HB) Trip: one where the home of the trip maker is either the origin or the

destination of the journey.

• Non-Home- Based Trip: one where neither end of the trip is the home of the traveler.

• Trip Production: number of trips originating from a TAZ/household/establishment.

• Trip Attraction: number of trips destined to a TAZ/household/establishment.

 The 4-Step Modeling Process
1. Trip generation(TG):
seeks to know the amount of trips generated by a TAZ/ household or
establishment. TG can be Trip Production or Trip Attraction.

A TG model seeks to:

• To develop a relationship between trip production/attraction & land
use
• To use the relationship developed to estimate the number of trips
generated at some future date under a new set of land-use conditions.
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
Factors Affecting Trip Generation
Production Attraction
• Income • Employment
• Car ownership • Sales
• Household structure • Space available for industrial,
• Family size commercial or other services
• Value of land
• Residential density
• Accessibility
The 4-Step Modeling Process
• Some types of TG models:
• Growth factor models
• Regression models
• Discrete choice models
• Category classification (MCA)
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
• Growth factor models: use current trip rate data and projections of explanatory
variables such as population (P), average house hold income (I), average vehicle
ownership (V) of the zone, to predict trip rates in the future.
where:

where d= design year & i = current year

Possible pitfalls to this approach?

 The 4-Step Modeling Process
• Regression models: use functional relationship between explanatory variables
and the number of trips to estimate current and future trip rates.
• where:

Assumptions:
1. All the independent variables are independent of each other.
2. All the independent variables are normally distributed.
3. The independent variables are continuous.
The 4-Step Modeling Process

Model-specific!!!
ASSIGNMENT-4
 TG done! What remains?
We know:
• Total number of trips produced by each zone.
• Total number of trips attracted by each zone.

What we don’t know yet:

• How are the total trips produced by each zone distributed?
• What kind of transportation do they use?
• Which routes do these trips take?
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
2. Trip Distribution (TD):
• seeks to know the destination zones of trips produced by each zone
and conversely the origins of trips attracted by each zone.
• Final outcome: an origin-destination matrix.
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
Example of an O-D matrix
O\D 1 2 3 4 Sum
1 20 23 120 56 219
2 25 47 15 72 159
3 30 50 55 44 179
4 43 100 27 80 250
Sum 118 220 217 252
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
• Question: Why don’t we just collect the O-D data and match them to get an O-D
matrix?

• Possible models:

1. Growth factor Models

2. The Gravity Model

 The 4-Step Modeling Process
Growth factor Models
Current Matrix Future Matrix
O\D 1 2 3 4 Sum O\D 1 2 3 4 Sum
1 20 23 120 56 219 1 ? ? ? ? 340
2 25 47 15 72 159 2 ? ? ? ? 480
3 30 50 55 44 179 3 ? ? ? ? 220
4 43 100 27 80 250 4 ? ? ? ? 450
Sum 118 220 217 252 Sum 320 275 365 530
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
Growth factor Models: there are different kinds

a) Uniform Growth Factor: apply same growth factor to all cells of base-
year(current) matrix.
where:
• Future matrix entry [Origin i & destination j)
• Base year (current) entry [Origin i & destination j]
• Growth factor
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
Growth factor Models: there different kinds
b) Singly Constrained Growth-Factor: based on information available on either
future trip productions or future trip attractions.
… origin-specific growth factor model
… destination-specific growth factor model
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
Growth factor Models: there are different kinds

c) Doubly Constrained Growth-Factor: based on information available on both

future trip productions or future trip attractions; hence two growth factors.
… different origin & destination-specific growth factors model

Balancing needed:
where :
and
Pros & Cons?
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
The Gravity Model assumes trips from I to j depend on:
• trip production at i Analogous to
• trip attraction at j Newton’s model
• deterrence to travel (e.g. distance, time, cost, etc.) of universal
where: gravitation
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
For a doubly-constrained Gravity Model:
&
where:
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
For a doubly-constrained Gravity Model, because we need to satisfy
&

We decompose into two balancing factors, and , to yield:

Where: and

What form does the deterrence function take?

 The 4-Step Modeling Process
• Forms of the deterrence function:

• The purpose of the deterrence function is to “deter” the trip function

• must be decreasing
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
• Alternative gravity model:

Where:

Single or Doubly constrained?

 The 4-Step Modeling Process
• Alternative gravity model:
• Adjust attraction at each iteration as follows:

Where:
adjusted attraction total for zone j, iteration k
when k =1
actual attraction total for zone j iteration k
iteration number
attraction zone number
The 4-Step Modeling Process
 TD done! What remains?
We know:
• Where the trips produced by each zone go to.

What we don’t know yet:

• What kind of transportation do the trips use?
• Which routes do these trips take?
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
3. Modal Split (MS):
• seeks to know people’s decisions regarding mode of travel: car,
bus, train, etc.

• Final outcome: percentage share of each mode from each from the
OD matrix.
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
3. Modal Split (MS): is CHOICE MODELING

Key decision factors.

• The characteristics of the trip maker (e.g. family income,
number of cars available, family size, residential density)
• The characteristics of the trip (e.g. trip distance, time of day)

• The characteristics of the transportation system (e.g. riding time,

excess time)
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
3. Modal Split (MS):
The choice problem and related assumptions.
• Choices are discrete (finite and distinct)

• There is an independence of irrelevant alternatives assumption

• This is due to the mathematical structure of the models we use
(more on this later)
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
3. Modal Split (MS): Modeling alternatives

• Multinomial Logit Model (MNL)

• Has a linear utility function
• Utility function has two parts: deterministic & random (error)
• Error is extreme value distributed; hence the logit formulation
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
3. Modal Split (MS): Modeling alternatives

• Probability of choosing (% share of ) mode 1 is:

where:

• is the generalized cost of mode k and is a taste parameter indicating an

individual’s inclination towards a particular type of transportation
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
• So what did we mean by the IIA assumption earlier?
• Consider the mode choices: car, bus & train
&
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
3. Modal Split (MS): Modeling alternatives

• The ratio of the two choice probabilities is independent of the choice probability
for the train (i.e. the irrelevant) alternative.

Question: What if another type of bus service is introduced?

 The 4-Step Modeling Process
3. Modal Split (MS): Modeling alternatives

• Nested Logit Model structure:

The 4-Step Modeling Process
 MS done! What remains?
We know:
• What kind of transportation do the trips use?

What we don’t know yet:

• Which routes do these trips take?
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
4. Traffic Assignment (TA)
• Assigns traffic demand to the infrastructure network.

Characteristics of Demand
Characteristics of Supply
• Capacity
• Origin-destination (OD)
• Maximum travel speed
• Trip purpose
• One-way streets
• Travel mode
• Tolls
• Time period
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
4. Traffic Assignment (TA)
• Computes one or more optimal routes between each origin & destination and
distributing travel demand over these routes, i.e.,
• Estimates traffic volume on the links of the network & obtain aggregate
network measures.
• Analyzes the travel pattern of each O-D pair.
• Identifies congested links and collects traffic data useful for the design of
future junctions
• Assignment is different by transport mode
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
4. Traffic Assignment (TA)
TA Inputs TA Outputs
• An O-D table of trips • the routes

• A representation of the network; • the route characteristics (travel times, distances, costs);
• route loads: the number of trips per route;
• characteristics of network
• link and node loads: the number of trips per unit time
elements (links and nodes);
(flow) on each link and each turn at junctions.
• a route choice model.
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
4. Traffic Assignment (TA)
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
4. Traffic Assignment (TA): Models
• All-Or-Nothing (AON) assignment: all traffic between an O-D pair is assigned to
just one, usually the shortest, path.

• Realistic?
• Alternative paths
• Capacity Further Reading Question:
• Congestion How do we find the shortest path in a large network?

Read on: Dijkstra’s Shortest Path Algorithm

• When is this model practical?
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
4. Traffic Assignment (TA): Models

• User Equilibrium Assignment

• Wardrop's first principle: “Under equilibrium conditions traffic arranges itself in

congested networks in such a way that no individual trip maker can reduce his
path costs by switching routes.”

• All the used routes between an O-D pair have equal and minimum costs while all
unused routes have greater or equal costs.
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
4. Traffic Assignment (TA): Models
• User Equilibrium Assignment: formulation

t a =travel time onlink a connecting the origin∧destination

𝑥 𝑎= 𝑓𝑙𝑜𝑤 𝑜𝑛 𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑎
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
4. Traffic Assignment (TA): Models
• The user equilibrium assignment assumes that:
• The user has perfect knowledge of the path cost.
• Travel time on a given link is a function of the flow on that link only.
• Travel time functions are positive and increasing.

Any comments on the assumptions?

 The 4-Step Modeling Process
4. Traffic Assignment (TA): Models
• System Optimum Assignment

• Wardrop's second principle: “Under social equilibrium conditions, traffic should

be arranged in congested networks in such a way that the average (or total)
travel cost is minimized.”

Behaviorally realistic?
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
4. Traffic Assignment (TA): Models
• System Optimum Assignment: Mathematical formulation

𝑥 𝑎= 𝑓𝑙𝑜𝑤 𝑜𝑛 𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑎
t a =travel time onlink a connecting the origin∧destination
 The 4-Step Modeling Process
4. Traffic Assignment (TA): Models

Worked Examples on Excel Sheet

The 4-Step Modeling Process