TY - JOUR
T1 - From macro to microscopic trip generation
T2 - Representing heterogeneous travel behavior
AU - Moeckel, Rolf
AU - Huntsinger, Leta
AU - Donnelly, Rick
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Moeckel et al.
PY - 2017/3/1
Y1 - 2017/3/1
N2 - Background: In four-step travel demand models, average trip generation rates are traditionally applied to static household type definitions. In reality, however, trip generation is more heterogeneous with some households making no trips and other households making more than a dozen trips, even if they are of the same household type. Objective: This paper aims at improving trip-generation methods without jumping all the way to an activity-based model, which is a very costly form of modeling travel demand both in terms of development and computer processing time. Method: Two fundamental improvements in trip generation are presented in this paper. First, the definition of household types, which traditionally is based on professional judgment rather than science, is revised to optimally reflect trip generation differences between the household types. For this purpose, over 67 million definitions of household types were analyzed econometrically in a Big-Data exercise. Secondly, a microscopic trip generation module was developed that specifies trip generation individually for every household. Results: This new module allows representing the heterogeneity in trip generation found in reality, with the ability to maintain all household attributes for subsequent models. Even though the following steps in a trip-based model used in this research remained unchanged, the model was improved by using microscopic trip generation. Mode-specific constants were reduced by 9%, and the Root Mean Square Error of the assignment validation improved by 7%.
AB - Background: In four-step travel demand models, average trip generation rates are traditionally applied to static household type definitions. In reality, however, trip generation is more heterogeneous with some households making no trips and other households making more than a dozen trips, even if they are of the same household type. Objective: This paper aims at improving trip-generation methods without jumping all the way to an activity-based model, which is a very costly form of modeling travel demand both in terms of development and computer processing time. Method: Two fundamental improvements in trip generation are presented in this paper. First, the definition of household types, which traditionally is based on professional judgment rather than science, is revised to optimally reflect trip generation differences between the household types. For this purpose, over 67 million definitions of household types were analyzed econometrically in a Big-Data exercise. Secondly, a microscopic trip generation module was developed that specifies trip generation individually for every household. Results: This new module allows representing the heterogeneity in trip generation found in reality, with the ability to maintain all household attributes for subsequent models. Even though the following steps in a trip-based model used in this research remained unchanged, the model was improved by using microscopic trip generation. Mode-specific constants were reduced by 9%, and the Root Mean Square Error of the assignment validation improved by 7%.
KW - Big data
KW - Microsimulation
KW - Travel behavior
KW - Trip generation
KW - Trip-based model
KW - Validation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85018558370&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.2174/1874447801711010031
DO - 10.2174/1874447801711010031
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85018558370
SN - 1874-4478
VL - 11
SP - 31
EP - 43
JO - Open Transportation Journal
JF - Open Transportation Journal
ER -