Urban Travel Forecasting:

What Was Learned in the Past 50 Years?

How Should We Proceed in the Future?

Professor David Boyce

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA

Computational Transportation Science Seminar

University of Illinois at Chicago
April 25, 2007
 Overview
• Origins of urban travel forecasting
models in practice and in research;
• Model design choices facing the
travel forecaster;
• History and constraints of travel
forecasting software systems;
• Prospects for the future.
 Origins of travel forecasting models
• Travel forecasting, as we know it today, began in
the early 1950s:
– In practice, to provide a basis for designing post-war
freeway systems, as an outgrowth of earlier surveys of
urban travel patterns;
– In research, as an ingenious idea suggested by a new
theory of optimization, in the context of basic research
on allocation of scarce resources in a post-war civil
defense project.
• The former took hold, and was disseminated;
the latter was lost for 15 years, and has had little
impact on the field, despite its far-sighted
implications.
Travel Forecasting Procedure Based on Detroit Study Experience
(Carroll and Bevis, Papers of the Regional Science Ass’n, 1957)
The description of the
transportation planning
process, as found on
page 9 of the Final Report
of the Chicago Area
Transportation Study,
Volume I, 1959.
Fig. 20. Recommended Expressway Plan for the Chicago Study Area

This plan was recommended by the

Chicago Area Transportation Study in
1962. The solid red lines were agreed
upon before the Study began in 1955.
The dashed lines were proposed additions
to that system. Only one facility on this
map, I-355, was built; an extension is now
Crosstown under construction. The Crosstown
Expressway
Expressway became highly controversial
in the early 1970s, although funding was
I-355 available to build this facility. Those funds
were later used for arterial roads and
transit lines. This plan was the first and
last attempt to utilize optimizing methods
to design a plan.

Source: CATS (1962, Map 13, p. 64)

Martin Beckmann’s user-equilibrium travel
model with variable demand formulated as a
constrained, nonlinear optimization problem1

1. Beckmann, M., C. B. McGuire and C. B. Winsten (1956)

Studies in the Economics of Transportation, Yale University Press.
 Urban Location and Transportation Systems
• Urban activities may be viewed as a spatial system:
– land area, floor area and layout requirements of households, firms
and public agencies and services
– desire for spatial separation, light, clean air and environmental
amenities
– land availability and suitability for location requirements
• Transportation provides connections among activities:
– high density activities require higher capacity systems (e.g. rail
transit)
– low density, extensive activities require lower capacity, more
flexible systems (e.g. cars on an arterial network)
• Travel times and costs partially determine the relative
spacing of activities:
– households and workplaces
– households and retail firms and services
– employment and business services and package delivery
• Relation of travel times/costs to spatial interactions:
– unit travel costs increasing with network flows (roads)
– unit travel costs decreasing with network flows (some transit)
– ability of different modes to serve spatially intensive vs. spatially
decentralized patterns
• Land market and regulations: an imperfect mechanism for
coordinating land development, density and thereby travel.
• Major cohesive forces that causes large cities to grow:
– transportation services
– skilled labor supply
– agglomeration and localization economies (availability of specialized
services at one location)
– business and public services (why did Boeing move to Chicago?)
• Major forces that cause large cities to disperse:
– need to satisfy space requirements at lower cost
– desire to move closer to skilled labor force or to employ labor with different
attributes (why did Sears move to the outlying suburbs?)
– reluctance and lack of incentives to recycle previously used land
(reuse of brownfields)
One attempt to represent
the relationships among
urban activities and
transportation modes.
PTV America, Inc.
Let’s examine from first principles the attributes
of these phenomena, as might be the situation
in a place with no prior modeling experience.

• Unconstrained by prior research and practice;

• Unconstrained by computational requirements;
• Unconstrained by theory and data requirements.

Note: This may be dangerous! But it may offer

us some new insights into the phenomena.
 C. Network characteristics
• Vehicles (single-packet-flow)
• Relation of travel delay to:
> flows on links
> clock time
Framework for the design of
a travel forecasting model as
a three-dimensional matrix of
model attributes.

B. Basic dimensions of travel choices

• Frequency of travel
• Departure time
• Origin-destination flow
A. Basic model primitives • Mode choice structures
• Location of households, • Route choice structures and
employment, urban activities, travel time perceptions
land use
• Structure of travel choices
• Travel activities
• Traveler market segmentation
• Traveler classes
• Clock time
• Transportation technologies
(modes)
• Networks
A. Basic model primitives
• Location of households,
employment, urban activities,
land use
• Travel activities
• Traveler classes
• Clock time
• Transportation technologies
(modes)
• Networks
• Location of households, employment, urban activities and
land use
– Locations and land development defined by small areas
– Locations and land development defined by land parcel
– Locations and land development defined on a small grid
• Travel activities
– Trips from origins to destinations
– Tours, or sequences of trips
– Connections between activities (activity-based model)
• Traveler classes
– Socio-economic classes (households classified by number of
persons, number of workers, income, number of cars)
– Trip purposes, for trip-based and tour-based models
• Clock time
– Daily (24 hour)
– Period, such as peak-hour (static)
– Instantaneous or short interval (dynamic)
• Transportation technologies (modes)
– Vehicles only
– All movements of persons by mode, including walk, cycle
– Freight and persons
• Networks
– Nodes (intersections, zone centroids)
– Links (directed connections between two nodes)
– Travel time and cost/fare (links or origin to destination)
B. Basic dimensions of travel choices
• Frequency of travel
• Departure time
• Origin-destination flow
• Mode choice structures
• Route choice structures and
travel time perceptions
• Structure of travel choices
• Traveler market segmentation
• Frequency of travel
– Trips or tours per time period
• Departure time
– Uniform rate during modeling period
– Dependent on desired arrival time, or congested travel time
– Dependent upon avoiding congested travel conditions
• Origin-destination flow
– Demand function for each OD pair (Beckmann’s formulation)
– Constrained by total number of departures or arrivals (known as a
doubly-constrained gravity model)
– Destination choice function determined by variables describing
destination, and segmented by classes
• Route choice structures and assumptions about
perceptions of travel time
– Cost minimizing based on perfect information
(deterministic user-equilibrium)
– Cost minimizing based on perfect information with random
perception errors (stochastic user-equilibrium)
– Cost minimizing based on stochastic link/intersection travel times
with assumption about attitude towards risk
• Structure of travel choices (e.g. mode choice)
– Simultaneous (all choices decided at once)
– Sequential (sequence of choices, each dependent on the previous)
– Hierarchical (choices conditional on other information)
• Traveler market segmentation
– Tour type, designating the trip chain in which an individual trip
occurs: work tour, at-work tour, and non-work tour
– Chauffeured tours and non-chauffeured tours
C. Network characteristics
• Vehicles (single-packet-flow)
• Relation of travel delay to:
> flows on links
> clock time
• Vehicles
– Discrete or Packets (individual or groups of vehicles)
– Continuous (flows of vehicles)
– Scheduled (headways or timetable)
• Relation of traffic congestion to flows on network links
– Delay depends on each link’s own flow (separable)
– Delay depends on each link’s own flow plus traffic controls that
depend on other flows
– Delay depends directly or indirectly on all flows (non-separable)
• Relation of traffic congestion to clock time
– Delay depends on current flow only, or on current and future flow
– Delay depends on current and future flow, and on unknown
incidents
– Delay depends on boarding and alighting passengers, and number
of persons in vehicle
 Attributes of traditional travel forecasting models
• Basic primitives
– Activity locations defined by traffic analysis zones
– Trip-based, origin to destination
– Classes defined by trip purposes, with socio-economic segmentation
– Daily (24 hour) or Period, such as peak-period
– Sometimes vehicular travel only, including trucks
– Networks defined by nodes, links with travel time/cost
• Basic dimensions: four models solved sequentially/feedback
– Trips per time period with implied uniform departure rate
– Origin-destination flow constrained by number of departures and
arrivals (doubly-constrained gravity model)
– Nested logit mode choice model
– Cost minimizing route choice (deterministic user-equilibrium)
• Basic network characteristics
– Continuous flows of vehicles
– Delay depends on each link’s own flow (separable)
– Delay depends on current flow only
 Attributes of integrated travel forecasting models
• Basic primitives
– Activity locations defined by traffic analysis zones
– Trip-based or tour-based, origin to destination
– Classes defined by trip purposes, with socio-economic segmentation
– Multiple periods, such as peak and shoulder periods
– Person and vehicular travel, including trucks
– Networks defined by nodes, links with travel time/cost
• Basic dimensions: one integrated model of defined choices
– Trips per time period, exogenous or endogenous
– Origin-destination, mode and time period choices defined as flows
and constrained by number of departures and arrivals
– Cost minimizing route choice by period (deterministic user-equilibrium)
– Solved by an iterative algorithm to precise convergence
• Basic network characteristics
– Continuous flows of vehicles
– Delay depends on each link’s own flow (separable or non-separable)
– Delay depends on current flow only
Sequential Procedure Integrated Model

Activity Frequency Activity Frequency

(Trip Generation) (Trip Generation)

Destination Choice Dest Choice / Mode Choice /

(Trip Distribution) Period Choice / Route Choice

Consistent levels of
Mode Choice service with a precise
Feedback user-equilibrium solution

Route Choice
(Traffic Assignment)
 Feedback by Averaging of OD Matrices
Input data:
(Oi ) and (D j ) by trip purpose
Legend:
Road network
k – Loop index
W – Weight for averaging matrices
Compute the initial solution for k := 1 E – Feedback convergence target
Initialize travel costs ⇒ cij (1) CW – Constant Weights
MSA – Method of Successive Averages
Solve Trip Distribution ⇒ eij (1) ⇒ d ij (1) TMF – Total Misplaced Flow
Assign d ij (1) to road network ⇒ f a (1) RSE – Root Squared Error

Compute the solution for k := k + 1

Compute average OD cost cij (k ) Check convergence of eij (k ) to d ij (k − 1) :
Solve Trip Distribution ⇒ eij (k ) d ij (k − 1) − eij (k ) ≤ E , or
TMF = ∑ij
1/ 2
 2
Average trip matrices d ij (k − 1) and eij (k ) : RSE =  ∑ (d ij (k − 1) − eij (k ))  ≤ E
 ij 
If converged, then STOP; if not, continue.
CW: d (k ) = W ⋅ d ij (k − 1) + (1 − W ) ⋅ eij (k ) ,
or
 k −1 1 Assign d ij (k ) to road network to desired level
MSA: d (k ) =   ⋅ d ij (k − 1) +   ⋅ eij (k )
 k  k
of convergence of excess route costs ⇒ f a (k )
 Problems requiring travel forecasts
for transportation systems planning
• Systems or network planning:
– Determine system layout or configuration
– Determine spacing of facilities by type (e.g., freeway, arterial,
collector; rail, bus, shuttle)
– Determine overall capacities of facilities (vehicles, persons per hour)
• Subsystem or modal planning:
– Determine intersection lane capacities, signal system design
– Coordinate signal system design
– Determine transit frequencies (headways), vehicle size
– Coordinate transit services among submodes
• Staging of facility and service improvements:
– Determine annual and multi-year improvement programs
– Find optimal staging of project implementation
• Assessment of environmental, energy and social
consequences of transportation systems
– Determine total emissions (NOx, CO2, SO2) and energy
consumption by year, facility type, and subregions
– Determine equity and fairness measures (termed environmental
justice in USA)
– Determine which travel classes, trips, time periods are impacted by
a given system improvement
 Relationship to Location and Land Use Planning
• Extent and scale of transportation systems is determined
by location, density and scale of land use pattern and the
associated pattern of urban activities;
• Effectiveness and efficiency (cost) of alternative
transportation technologies (modes) depends on the
extent, density and layout (clustering or dispersion) of
urban activities;
• To be most effective, land use and transportation systems
planning must be coordinated and undertaken jointly.
 History of travel forecasting software systems
• The origins of travel forecasting software may be traced to
the first use of main frame computers in this field in 1958;
• Software systems called “batteries” were developed by the
Federal Government and its consultants in the 1960s;
• These were reorganized and extended during the 1970s
as the Urban Transportation Planning System (UTPS);
• Consultants to the Federal Government and transportation
studies also developed software systems, in part with the
support of Control Data Corporation, which sought service
contracts (TranPlan, and later MinUTP);
• During the 1980s new software systems were developed
from the findings of academic research based on the PC
(EMME/2, TransCAD, SATURN, VISION System);
• Since the 1990s, a consolidation of software systems has
occurred, resulting in four principal systems (CUBE, EMME,
TransCAD, VISION) and a few systems found in selected
global regions (ESTRAUS, SATURN, TRACKS, TRANUS).
 Constraints imposed by software systems
• Nearly all software is based on the traditional sequential
procedure view of travel forecasting;
• As a result, the capabilities offered are basically toolkits for
implementing and solving specific models, and sequences
of models, as found in practice;
• These capabilities are linked together by menus, scripts
and other ad hoc methods;
• Only one software vendor offers a specially designed
solution procedure based on the integrated model concept
(MCT’s ESTRAUS);
• General purpose solvers for integrated models, formulated
as optimization problems, are not efficient for the large-
scale implementations found in this field; micro-simulation
remains impractical and may omit important relationships.
• Professional practice and training of practitioners is
increasingly related to one or more of these software
systems, which are often seen as “black boxes” by users.
 Prospects for the Future
• Need for better informed decisions is increasing (global
warming, resource shortages, equity around the world);
• Implications of bad decisions are not confined to wasted
resources, since system equilibria will adjust to the realities,
and the least efficient urban cities will decline (St. Louis,
Detroit in the US; Russia, Britain in the world economy);
• Opportunities to create more livable and productive urban
environments may be lost, if decisions are not improved;
• Progress in advancing travel and location models is slow
and evolutionary, but capability to apply accumulated
knowledge through improving computer hardware and
software appears to expand at an increasing rate;
• Progress will ultimately depend upon improved training of
professionals and researchers, which is relatively slow;
• Therefore, investment in education and research is the key
to exploiting the technological advances that computer
engineering and science is providing to us.