1 Modeling Transportation Demand Using Emme / 2 – a Case Study of Hiroshima Urban Area

In the last 30 years, there have been three transportation master plan studies for the Hiroshima urban area, Japan. The planning software used in these studies have been developed by the consultants engaged in the studies. Generally, the transportation models developed for the Hiroshima projects have not been used elsewhere. There is also a lack of information regarding the uses and application of these software. The objective of this study is to develop a transportation model for the Hiroshima urban area using EMME/2 and to evaluate and explore the usefulness of EMME/2. This involved modeling EMME/2 with the 1987 urban activities and transportation data in Hiroshima urban area. The results from the calibrated EMME/2 model were checked against the observed traffic and demand data for the year 1987. Suitability of EMME/2 was judged by the ease of coding and modeling as well as the flexibility of usage and the level of errors between outputs and observed values. It was found that EMME/2 produced the result compatible with those of Japanese planning models. Several features of EMME/2, such as the unified database, the matrix editor and the powerful macro system, proved to make transportation modeling more flexible than the Japanese models.