Demand Modeling

Modeling travel demand within a corridor means developing a table that defines the trips people make within a network:

  • between specific zones
  • by time of day
  • by mode
  • by purpose

Such a table, or matrix, is often related to the demand model maintained by regional planning agencies such as SCAG (Southern California Association of Governments), shown to the right. Similar to other leading commercial models, the Aimsun model the Connected Corridors team is working with uses origin-destination matrices to model traffic demand.

Part of the work in this approach involves deciding how many matrices to develop to capture demand at a useful level of granularity. For example:

Which day(s) to model? What period of day to model? Which types of vehicles?
  • Average weekday
  • Individual weekdays
  • Average Saturday
  • Average Sunday
  • Hard Holidays
  • Soft Holidays
  • AM peak period
  • PM peak period
  • Midday
  • Evening/night
  • Single-occupancy passenger cars
  • High-occupancy passenger cars
  • Medium-duty truck
  • Heavy-duty trucks

A detailed description of the team's demand modeling approach can be found in the AMS Phase 2 presentation.