Overview
The goal of this research was to improve urban-scale modeling and network procedures to address operations or spot improvement that affects travel-time choice, route choice, mode choice, reliability, or emissions. Such improvements may include traveler information, expanded transit service, pricing, reversible lanes, or improved bottlenecks. Operational improvements like these are difficult to model on an urban-area scale using existing tools. A secondary goal was to facilitate further development and deployment of these or similar procedures. The goals were addressed by building a proof-of-concept dynamic integrated model in two urban areas: Jacksonville, Florida, and Sacramento, California.
The report describes the Sacramento, California, integration of the activity-based demand model DaySim; a dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) model, DynusT; and a transit network simulation model, FAST-TrIPs. All are open-source products. Integration means that a feedback loop was built between the demand and network assignment model systems. All of the demographic, highway network, and transit service data required to run the model set were assembled, and the feedback between the demand model and the DTA was tested in a subarea of Sacramento and on the full urban network. A Volume 2 report describes the application of DynusT and FAST-TrIPs in detail.
A companion report and model set are available for the application in Jacksonville, Florida. This work has the same objective and uses DaySim as the demand model but uses TRANSIMS for the highway network assignment. Both model sets and software Start-up Guides are available from the Federal Highway Administration.