Resources

General Regional Travel Demand Modeling

Excellent introduction to travel demand models for non-modelers:

• Beimborn, Edward. A Transportation Modeling Primer (1995)
• And expanded edition coauthored by Rob Kennedy and William Schaefer: Inside the Black Box: Making Transportation Models Work for Livable Communities
• Fairly technical introduction to Activity Based Models (ABMs): Castiglione, Joe, Mark Bradley and John Gliebe. Activity-Based Travel Demand Models: A Primer. Transportation Research Board (2015)
• Realistic Analysis of Urban Freeway Expansion and Downsizing (2017). Norman L. Marshall.

Model Makeover #1: Realistic Scenarios

Report introducing the concept of “assumption drag” in travel demand modeling and strongly recommending modeling alternative scenarios:

• Zmud, Johanna P., Vincent P. Barabba, Mark Bradley, J. Richard Kuzmyak, Mia Smuda and David Orrell. Strategic Issues Facing Transportation Volume 6: The Effects of Socio-Demographics on Future Travel Demand, P. 5. National Cooperative Highway Research Program Report 750 (2014)

Federal Highway online reference on scenario planning: FHWA Scenario Planning Guidebook.

Summary of 15 years of scenario planning projects in the U.S.:

• Bartholomew, Keith, Integrating Land Use Issues into Transportation Planning: Scenario Planning Summary Report,  (2005) 

Synthesis of studies on the important issue of induced travel (as well as other useful resources at link):

• Handy, S. and M. G. Boarnet. Impact of Highway Capacity and Induced Travel on Passenger Vehicle Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Policy Brief prepared for California Air Resources Board (2014)

Statistical analysis showing that congestion is mostly sign of regional health rather than a problem that can be solved – although a good local street network makes a big difference

• Marshall, Norman L. A Statistical Model of Regional Traffic Congestion in the United States (2015)

Model Makeover #2: Multimodal Modeling

A summary of the very rich research literature on the relationship between travel and the build environment:

• Ewing, Reid and Robert Cevero, Travel and the Build Environment, Journal of the American Planning Association (2010)

The Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) has a long history of successfully incorporating measures of the build environment into its travel demand models. This is a link to documentation on their current model:

• Sacramento Area Council of Governments. Sacramento Activity-Based Travel Simulation Model (SACSIM11); Model Reference Report (2012)

Report that documents work in the Washington DC region showing that including build environment models improves accuracy in transit modeling:

• Marshall, Norm and Brian Grady, Sketch Transit Modeling Based on 2000 Census Data (2008)

Model Makeover 3: Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA)

Introduction to Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA)

• Chiu, Y., J. Botton, M.l Mahut, A. Paz, R. Balakrishna, T. Waller and J. Hicks. Dynamic Traffic Assignment: A Primer. Transportation Research Board, Transportation Research Circular E-C153 (2011)

Papers showing how DTA models congestion much more accurately than conventional models using a) a set of simple models, and b) a regional model:

• Marshall, Norm, Comparison of Regional Congestion Metrics with Static and Dynamic Assignment Models (2015)
• Marshall, Norm, Dynamic Traffic Assignment in Regional Travel Demand Models: the Future is Now (2015)