An Evolutionary Transportation Planning Model: Structure and Application

Abstract

This paper describes an evolutionary transportation planning model wherein the demand in a given year depends on the demand of the previous year. The model redistributes a fraction of the work trips each year due to the relocation of a household or taking a new job, while changes in distribution due to growth (or decline) are considered. This hybrid-evolutionary model is compared with an equilibrium model, wherein supply and demand are solved simultaneously. The reasons for preferring the evolutionary method to the equilibrium approach are several: (a) the ability to more easily use observed data and thereby limit modeling to changes in behavior; (b) additional realism in the concept of the model; (c) the provision of a framework for extension to integration with land use models; and (d) the additional information available to policy makers.