A Windowed Transportation Planning Model

Abstract

This research develops and applies a transportation planning model that integrates regional and local area forecasting approaches. While regional models have the scope to model the interaction of demand and congestion, they lack the spatial detail of a local approach. Local approaches typically do not consider the feedback between new project traffic and existing levels of traffic. Using a window, which retains the regional trip distribution information and the consistency between travel demand and congestion, allows the use of a complete transportation network and block level traffic zones while retaining computational feasibility. By combining the two methods, a number of important policy issues can be addressed, including the implications of traffic calming, changes in flow due to alternative traffic operation schemes, the influence of micro-scale zoning changes on nearby intersections, the impact of TDM on traffic congestion, and the consequences of a suburban light rail line.