A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO TRAVEL DEMAND MODELING IN SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZED AREAS

Abstract

Travel demand forecasting is the foundation of many transportation planning activities such as: 1) long term system planning; 2) sub-area/corridor study; 3) air quality conformity analysis; 4) transportation concurrency analysis; and 5) assessment of development impact fees. Many large urban area planning agencies invest a significant portion of their staff time and resources in developing and maintaining their traffic models. However, small and medium-sized urban area planning agencies have fewer resources to dedicate to traffic model development. These communities can develop and maintain adequate traffic models, but they will have to use some practical and cost-effective approaches. Through developing, updating, calibrating and applying several large and small urban area travel demand forecasting models, the author has accumulated some practical approaches for travel demand modeling. These practical approaches include roadway network and traffic analysis zone definition, network data collection and processing, socioeconomic variables and trip purpose categories selection for trip generations, gravity model coefficients fine tuning for trip distribution, and model calibration.

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