U.S. National and Inter-Regional Travel Demand Analysis: Person-Level Microsimulation Model and Application to High-Speed Rail Demand Forecasting

The objective of this proposed research project is to develop a prototype microsimulation-based national and inter-regional passenger travel demand model for High Speed Rail demand forecasting and other national-level travel analysis. The proposed research represents the first attempt to develop a microsimulation-based national long-distance travel demand for high speed rail and national travel analysis. All major behavioral dimensions of long-distance travel will be considered, except for route choice and network loading that require significant new network data collection/coding efforts and cannot be achieved with the limited budgeted of this project. Compare to the traditional four-step approach, microsimulation-based techniques offer several advantages: (1) It is easier to consider tours, multi-day and multi-stop trips, and intermodal access/egress transfers that are important for long-distance travel modeling; (2) Households and persons are the basic units of analysis, which enables detailed behavioral representations and interactions; and (3) It provides a rich framework in which travel is analyzed as a multi-day, monthly, quarterly, or yearly pattern of behavior, derived from activity participation. There are also significant differences between long-distance trips considered in the proposed microsimulation-based model and trips on a daily/weekly basis represented in metropolitan/state-level tour/activity-based models developed in previous research. For instance, it is often the case that households first choose travel modes for long-distance vacation trips based on travel budget before selecting destinations. Categorization of trip purposes is also different for long-distance trips. Cost of travel for long-distance trips is not just travel disutility, but also includes lodging, food, etc., and the same with the total travel time for long-distance which usually covers not only in-vehicle travel time but also the ingress/egress time, transfer time, and lodge time. The much lower frequency of long-distance travel may also imply a different decision-making process. This research is exploratory in nature, and it is hoped that the final product, the prototype microsimulation-based model, will be able to predict high speed rail travel demand among various OD pairs at the national level.

• Record URL:
  http://ntc.umd.edu/node/35

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $80000.00
• Contract Numbers:

  DTRT13-G-UTC30

• Sponsor Organizations:

  National Transportation Center @ Maryland

  1173 Glenn L. Martin Hall
  University of Maryland
  College Park, Maryland  United States  20742
• Project Managers:

  Zhang, Lei

• Performing Organizations:

  University of Maryland, College Park

  Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
  1173 Glenn Martin Hall
  College Park, MD  United States  20742
• Principal Investigators:

  Zhang, Lei

• Start Date: 20140101
• Expected Completion Date: 0
• Actual Completion Date: 20141231
• Source Data: RiP Project 37160

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Data collection; Forecasting; High speed rail; Intermodal terminals; Microsimulation; Route choice; Travel costs; Travel demand
• Subject Areas: Economics; Passenger Transportation; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; Railroads;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01575258
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: National Transportation Center @ Maryland
• Contract Numbers: DTRT13-G-UTC30
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Sep 1 2015 1:43AM