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Title:

TourCast: Trade-offs in Activity-Based Model Implementations
Cover of TourCast: Trade-offs in Activity-Based Model Implementations

Accession Number:

01478389

Record Type:

Component

Availability:

Transportation Research Board Business Office

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Abstract:

Activity-Based Models (ABM) are becoming increasingly popular for large-scale regional travel models developed for planning agencies in the United States. These models have common features: use of tours as the primary units for modeling travel; an activity-based platform deriving travel from the daily activities undertaken by households and persons; and microsimulation modeling applied at the disaggregate level of persons and households to convert activity- and travel-related choices from probability model outcomes into a series of decisions among discrete choices. The focus of this paper is not on the details of any given model but on the computational implementation of the models. For a new model being developed in Houston, an approach called TourCast was developed to meet the objectives of the local planning process while taking advantages of lessons learned from model implementations at other agencies. The new design approach builds on the architecture of the Denver and Sacramento models but emphasizes efficiency of computation and ease of configuration. ABMs can be time-consuming to execute, and this problem will be exacerbated with more zones, more households, and more complex models. Agencies need to determine their objectives in terms of model sophistication, ease of configuration, application platform, and execution speed and their willingness to tradeoff performance and capabilities to achieve these objectives. This paper provides information about potential ABM implementation methods across the spectrum of model configuration types and discusses the potential tradeoffs among model run time, complexity, and access to intermediate and final model data and outputs.

Supplemental Notes:

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB50 Transportation Planning Applications.

Monograph Accession #:

01470560

Report/Paper Numbers:

13-3712

Language:

English

Corporate Authors:

Transportation Research Board

500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001 United States

Authors:

Meeks, W Scott
Sabina, Erik E
Childress, Suzanne
van Slyke, Chris Dale
Mullins III, James A
Ziering, Eric A
Rossi, Thomas

Pagination:

14p

Publication Date:

2013

Conference:

Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting

Location: Washington DC, United States
Date: 2013-1-13 to 2013-1-17
Sponsors: Transportation Research Board

Media Type:

Digital/other

Features:

Figures; References; Tables

Uncontrolled Terms:

Activity-based models

Geographic Terms:

Houston (Texas)

Subject Areas:

Highways; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Source Data:

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2013 Paper #13-3712

Files:

PRP, TRIS, TRB

Created Date:

Feb 5 2013 12:44PM