The focus of this dissertation is a methodology to select an appropriate subnetwork from a large urban transportation network that experiences changes to a small fraction of the whole network. Subnetwork selection techniques are most effective when using a regional dynamic traffic assignment model. The level of detail included in the regional model relieves the user of manually coding subnetwork components because they can be extracted from the full model. This method will reduce the resources necessary for an agency to complete an analysis through time and cost savings. Dynamic traffic assignment also has the powerful capability of determining rerouting due to network changes. However, the major limitation of these new dynamic models is the computational demand of the algorithms, which inhibit use of full regional models for comparing multiple scenarios. By examining a smaller window of the network, where impacts are expected to occur, the burden of computer power and time can be overcome. These methods will contribute to the accuracy of dynamic transportation systems analysis, increase the tractability of these advanced traffic models, and help implement new modeling techniques previously limited by network size. The following describes how to best understand the effects of reducing a network to a subarea and how this technique may be implemented in practice. / text

Transportation planning and urban development in the United States have synchronously emerged over the past few decades to encompass goals associated with sustainability, improved connectivity, complete streets and mitigation of environmental impacts. These goals have evolved in tandem with some of the relatively more traditional objectives of supply-side improvements such as infrastructure and capacity expansion. Apart from the numerous federal regulations in the US transportation sector that reassert sustainability motivations, metropolitan planning organizations and civic societies face similar concerns in their decision-making and policy implementation. However, overall transportation planning to incorporate these wide-ranging objectives requires characterization of large-scale transportation systems and traffic flow through them, which is dynamic in nature, computationally intense and a non-trivial problem. Thus, these contemporary questions lie at the interface of transportation planning, urban development and sustainability planning. They have the potential of being effectively addressed through state-of-the-art transportation modeling tools, which is the main motivation and philosophy of this thesis. From the research standpoint, some of these issues have been addressed in the past typically from the urban design, built-environment, public health and vehicle technology and mostly qualitative perspectives, but not as much from the traffic engineering and transportation systems perspective---a gap in literature which the thesis aims to fill. Specifically, it makes use of simulation-based dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) to develop modeling paradigms and integrated frameworks to seamlessly incorporate these in the transportation planning process. In addition to just incorporating them in the planning process, DTA-based paradigms are able to accommodate numerous spatial and temporal dynamics associated with system traffic, which more traditional static models are not able to. Besides, these features are critical in the context of the planning questions of this study. Specifically, systemic impacts of suburban and urban street pattern developments typically found in US cities in past decades of the 20th century have been investigated. While street connectivity and design evolution is mostly regulated through local codes and subdivision ordinances, its impacts on traffic and system congestion requires modeling and quantitative evidence which are explored in this thesis. On the environmental impact mitigation side, regional emission inventories from the traffic sector have also been quantified. Novel modeling approaches for the street connectivity-accessibility problem are proposed. An integrated framework using the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory MOVES model has been developed, combining it with mesoscopic-level DTA simulation. Model demonstrations and applications on real and large-sized study areas reveal that different levels of connectivity and accessibility have substantial impacts on system-wide traffic---as connectivity levels reduce, traffic and congestion metrics show a gradually increasing trend. As regards emissions, incorporation of dynamic features leads to more realistic emissions inventory generation compared to default databases and modules, owing to consideration of the added dynamic features of system traffic and region-specific conditions. Inter-dependencies among these sustainability planning questions through the common linkage of traffic dynamics are also highlighted. In summary, the modeling frameworks, analyses and findings in the thesis contribute to some ongoing debates in planning studies and practice regarding ideal urban designs, provisions of sustainability and complete streets. Furthermore, the integrated emissions modeling framework, in addition to sustainability-related contributions, provides important tools to aid MPOs and state agencies in preparation of state implementation plans for demonstrating conformity to national ambient air-quality standards in their regions and counties. This is a critical condition for them to receive federal transportation funding. / text

<p>Travel demand management policies such as congestion charges encourage car-users to change among other things route, mode and departure time. Departure time may be especially affected by time-varying charges, since car-users can avoid high peak hour charges by travelling earlier or later, so called peak spreading effects. Conventional transport models do not include departure time choice as a response. For evaluation of time-varying congestion charges departure time choice is essential.</p><p>In this thesis a transport model called SILVESTER is implemented for Stockholm. It includes departure time, mode and route choice. Morning trips, commuting as well as other trips, are modelled and time is discretized into fifteen-minute time periods. This way peak spreading effects can be analysed. The implementation is made around an existing route choice model called CONTRAM, for which a Stockholm network already exists. The CONTRAM network has been in use for a long time in Stockholm and an origin-destination matrix calibrated against local traffic counts and travel times guarantee local credibility. On the demand side, an earlier developed departure time and mode choice model of mixed logit type is used. It was estimated on CONTRAM travel times to be consistent with the route choice model. The behavioural response under time-varying congestion charges was estimated from a hypothetical study conducted in Stockholm.</p><p>Paper I describes the implementation of SILVESTER. The paper shows model structure, how model run time was reduced and tests of convergence. As regards run time, a 75% cut down was achieved by reducing the number of origin-destination pairs while not changing travel time and distance distributions too much.</p><p>In Paper II car-users underlying preferred departure times are derived using a method called reverse engineering. This method derives preferred departure times that reproduce as well as possible the observed travel pattern of the base year. Reverse engineering has previously only been used on small example road networks. Paper II shows that application of reverse engineering to a real-life road network is possible and gives reasonable results.</p> / Silvester

Fluid dynamics models provide a powerful deterministic technique to approximate stochasticity in a variety of application areas. In this paper, we study two classes of fluid models, investigate their relationship as well as some of their applications. This analysis allows us to provide analytical models of travel times as they arise in dynamically evolving environments, such as transportation networks as well as supply chains. In particular, using the laws of hydrodynamic theory, we first propose and examine a general second order fluid model. We consider a first-order approximation of this model and show how it is helpful in analyzing the dynamic traffic equilibrium problem. Furthermore, we present an alternate class of fluid models that are traditionally used in the context of dynamic traffic assignment. By interpreting travel times as price/inventory-sojourn-time relationships, we are also able to connect this approach with a tractable fluid model in the context of dynamic pricing and inventory management. Finally, we investigate the relationship between these two classes of fluid models. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

The transportation routing map is increasingly used in various transportation network modeling applications such as vehicle navigation and traffic assignment modeling. A typical navigation GIS map contains all detailed road facility layers and may not be as computationally efficient as a lower-resolution map for path finding. A lower-resolution transportation routing map retains only route-finding related roadways and is efficient for path finding but may result in sub-optimal routes because of misclassification links. With the goal in balancing the traffic analysis requirement of intended application and computation requirements of transportation navigation and traffic assignment, the systematic abstraction of the lower-resolution transportation routing map from high resolution map is an important and non-trivial task. For vehicle navigation applications, the traffic analysis requirement is the shortest path quality. An innovative transportation routing map abstraction method or Connectivity Enhancement Algorithm (CEA) is proposed to deal with vehicle navigation application routing map abstraction. The algorithm starts from a low-resolution network and keeps updating the map by adding links and nodes when it processes each search set. The outcome of the algorithm is an abstract map that retains the original detailed map's hierarchical structure with quality topological connectivity at a significant computations saving. With the development of traffic assignment modeling, a detailed network is desired to describe the real world traffic network. It is the consensus that one should not directly apply a GIS map blind-sight without a systematic approach and unnecessarily overuse the network details causes excessive run time. The traffic analysis requirement of those applications is the dynamic user equilibrium (DUE) condition network performance is identical or near-identical with high resolution network. The lowest network resolution level that meets the requirements of emerging traffic analysis is not easy to determine. The proposed traffic analysis network abstraction method gives a solution for this problem. It is an iterative network abstraction approach and considers the link travel time with DUE traffic condition. The case study and numerical analysis prove that the two network abstraction methods are sound and promising. The transportation routing map abstraction method could detect most misclassification links and is robust for different network scales. The abstracted navigation map provides the identical or near-identical SP cost/travel time for any OD pair while the computation burden is much lighter than that on original map. In another hand, the case studies about the traffic analysis network abstraction tell that the method converges very quick and the rendered the abstracted network that has lowest resolution of network or least links and nodes but the DUE condition network performance or trips cost/travel time is much closer to that on the original map.

The cell transmission model (CTM) based single destination system optimal dynamic traffic assignment (SD-SO-DTA) model has been widely applied to situations such as mass evacuations on a transportation network. Although formulated as a linear programming (LP) model, embedded multi-period cell network representation yields an extremely large model for real-size networks. As a result, most of these models are not solvable using existing LP solvers. Solutions obtained by LP also involve holding vehicles at certain locations, violating CTM flow dynamics. This doctoral research is aimed at developing innovative algorithms that overcome both computational efficiency and solution realism issues. We first prove that the LP formulation of the SD-SO-DTA problem is equivalent to the earliest arrival flow (EAF), and then develop efficient algorithms to solve EAF. Two variants of the algorithm are developed under different model assumptions and network operating conditions. For the case of time-varying network parameters, we develop a network flow algorithm on a time-expanded network. The main challenge in this approach is to address the issue of having backward wave speed lower than forward wave speed. This situation leads to non-typical constraints involving coefficients with value of less than 1. In this dissertation we develop a new network algorithm to solve this problem in optimal, even with coefficients of value less than 1. Additionally, the developed approach solves for optimal flows that exhibit non-vehicle-holding properties, which is a major breakthrough compared to all existing solution techniques for SD-SODTA. For the case of time-invariant network parameters, we reduce the SD-SO-DTA to a standard EAF problem on a dynamic network, which is constructed on the original roadway network without dividing it into cells. We prove that the EAF under free flow status is one of the optimal solutions of SD-SO-DTA, if cell properties follow a trapezoidal/triangular fundamental diagram. We use chain flows obtained on a static network to induce dynamic flows, an approach applicable to large-scale networks. Another contribution of this research is to provide a simple and practical algorithm solving the EAF with multiple sources, which has been an active research area for many years. Most existing studies involve submodular function optimization as subroutines, and thus are not practical for real-life implementation. This study’s contribution in this regard is the development of a practical algorithm that avoids submodular function optimization. The main body of the given method is comprised of |S⁺| iterations of earliest arrival s - t flow computations, where |S⁺| is the number of sources. Numerical results show that our multi-source EAF algorithm solves the SD-SO-DTA problem with time-invariant parameters to optimum.

Managed lane strategies are innovative road operation schemes for addressing congestion problems. These strategies operate a lane (lanes) adjacent to a freeway that provides congestion-free trips to eligible users, such as transit or toll-payers. To ensure the successful implementation of managed lanes, the demand on these lanes need to be accurately estimated. Among different approaches for predicting this demand, the four-step demand forecasting process is most common. Managed lane demand is usually estimated at the assignment step. Therefore, the key to reliably estimating the demand is the utilization of effective assignment modeling processes. Managed lanes are particularly effective when the road is functioning at near-capacity. Therefore, capturing variations in demand and network attributes and performance is crucial for their modeling, monitoring and operation. As a result, traditional modeling approaches, such as those used in static traffic assignment of demand forecasting models, fail to correctly predict the managed lane demand and the associated system performance. The present study demonstrates the power of the more advanced modeling approach of dynamic traffic assignment (DTA), as well as the shortcomings of conventional approaches, when used to model managed lanes in congested environments. In addition, the study develops processes to support an effective utilization of DTA to model managed lane operations. Static and dynamic traffic assignments consist of demand, network, and route choice model components that need to be calibrated. These components interact with each other, and an iterative method for calibrating them is needed. In this study, an effective standalone framework that combines static demand estimation and dynamic traffic assignment has been developed to replicate real-world traffic conditions. With advances in traffic surveillance technologies collecting, archiving, and analyzing traffic data is becoming more accessible and affordable. The present study shows how data from multiple sources can be integrated, validated, and best used in different stages of modeling and calibration of managed lanes. Extensive and careful processing of demand, traffic, and toll data, as well as proper definition of performance measures, result in a calibrated and stable model, which closely replicates real-world congestion patterns, and can reasonably respond to perturbations in network and demand properties.

Congestion charging has drawn considerable attention of transport analysts and policymakers as a mean of relieving urban traffic congestion. Proper prediction of the impacts of charging is necessary for policy makers to take right decisions. A European project named SILVERPOLIS have been introduced in this connection to describe state-of-practice in modelling effects of congestion charging and to identify features of transport models that are crucial for reliable forecasting of effects of congestion charging. This master thesis is a part of the SILVERPOLIS project, where Stockholm congestion charging scheme has been analysed using two different types of dynamic simulators: METROPOLIS and SILVESTER. The simulations are based on traffic data collected before and after the Stockholm congestion charging trial performed in spring 2006. The result of simulation suggests that METROPOLIS, which has been used for predicting effects of congestion charging in Ile-de-France, manages well to forecast the consequences of congestion charging for Stockholm. Comparison with SILVESTER model disclosed that, although calibration results of the two models differs in some respect, both models give similar results regarding impacts of congestion charging. The different modelling features and assumptions have been described for the two models. Despite the fact that the two models vary a lot in their assumptions and modelling style, both of them has proved to be good at describing the effect of congestion charging.

Disasters, ranging from manmade events to natural occurrences, can happen anywhere on the planet, and their consequences can range from economic loss to catastrophic loss of life. Determining how the transportation system fares in the face of these disasters is important so that proper planning can take place before, rather than after, an event has happened. Modeling the transportation system gives operators the ability to discover bottlenecks, to determine the possible benefit of using lane reversals, and to find out the influence of evacuation speed on system efficiency. Models have already been created that are able to model some of these types of disasters with some level of accuracy. These models range from microscopic simulation to regional, macroscopic models. This research examines how an off-the-shelf regional modeling software package, TransCAD, can be used to model emergency evacuations. More specifically, this thesis presents four case studies involving three different types of disasters in Western Massachusetts. Because this research documents a first-hand experience using TransCAD in emergency evacuation planning, the results give regional modelers the ability to modify their models to fit their specific region. These case studies demonstrate how the modified inputs and existing portions of the four-step transportation planning model can be used in place of the usual data demands of the software. Dynamic traffic assignment is used in three of the case studies while the fourth case study uses static traffic assignment. An evaluation of the software package along with lessons learned is provided to measure the performance of the software.

Urban transportation networks are vulnerable to various incidents. In order to combat the negative effects due to incident-related congestion, various mitigation strategies have been proposed and implemented. The effectiveness of these congestion mitigation strategies for incident conditions largely depends on the accuracy of information regarding network conditions. Therefore, an efficient and accurate procedure to determine the link states, reflected by flows and density over time, is essential to incident management. This thesis presents a user equilibrium Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA) model that incorporates the Cell Transmission Model (CTM) to evaluate the temporal variation of flow and density over links, which reflect the link states of a transportation network. Encapsulation of the CTM equips the model with the capability of accepting inputs of incidents like duration and capacity reduction. Moreover, the proposed model is capable of handling multiple origin-destination (OD) pairs. By using this model, the temporal variation of flows over links can be readily evaluated. The visualized prediction of link density variations is used to investigate the link state relationships. By isolating the effects of an incident, the parallel routes of a specific OD pair display the relationship of substituting for each other, which is consistent with the general expectation regarding such parallel routes. A closer examination of the density variations confirms the existence of a substitution relationship between the unshared links of the two parallel routes. This information regarding link state relationship can be used as general guidance for incident management purposes. / Master of Science