Mode Choice Methodology in TRANSIMS

TRANSIMS is a disaggregate, behavioral transportation planning package developed under US DOT's and EPA funding at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). It is an integrated system of travel forecasting models designed to give transportation planners accurate, complete information on traffic impacts, congestion, and pollution by simulating second-by-second movements of every person and every vehicle through the transportation network of a large metropolitan area. There is no built-in module for travellers’ mode choices In TRANSIMS. The modes going with the shortest path are always taken. In Portland Study, a mode choice methodology implemented by a series of feedback processes is proposed. However, it uses aggregate, deterministic mode choice model. There is little solid theoretic ground for the format and coefficients of the generalized costs used in the calibration process. The accessibility to a mode, especially to Transit, was also not included in the model. In the thesis, a disaggregate and deterministic mode choice methodology in TRANSIMS is developed. The accessibility to each mode is analyzed and included in the model. The methodology is then implemented on the Blacksburg transportation planning study, namely Blacksburg_Lite. The analysis of the result is based on the indicator of mode choice, mode split between Transit and Auto. The indicator is close to that in survey data and converged fast. Therefore, this mode choice methodology could be used within TRANSIMS framework. Lu, Q. Acknowledgements iii Acknowledgements Primarily, I want to express my appreciation to my advisor, Dr. Antoine Hobeika for his guidance and encouragement throughout the period of my graduate study at Virginia Tech. Appreciation is also owed to Dr. Antonio Trani and Dr. Hojong Baik, who have served on the review committee of the thesis. Additionally, I am appreciative of the instructors that I have had here at Virginia Tech, namely Dr. Antoine Hobeika, Dr. Wei Lin, Dr. Antonio Trani, Dr. Sam Tignor, Dr. Gerardo Flintsch, and Dr. Randy Dymond. The thesis is based on the datasets of Blacksburg_Lite study implemented by Virginia Tech TRANSIMS group. Therefore, I would like to thank other members in TRANSIMS group: Dr. Hobeika, Chaw, Yahong, Mansourah, Ken and Kevin. I also want to express my gratitude to my seniors, Hojong, Jamal, Yihua, Srinivas and Rajan for their elderly advice. I thank my colleagues, Senanu, Debayan, Nanditha, Sudheer, Charla and Sohn and my juniors, Wang, Bin, Yingjian, Anand, Christnan and Mansourah for their friendships and supports. Finally and most of all I would like to thank my husband, my parents and my brother for their deep love and continuous encouragement. Lu, Q. Table of