Modeling Transportation Planning Applications via Path Flow Estimator

The current practice for modeling in the field of transportation planning is through a four-step travel demand forecasting procedure (i.e., trip generation, trip distribution, mode choice, and traffic assignment); the practice is commonly referred to as the four-step model. Although such a modeling approach has become standard practice, it is deficient in several areas. Specifically, (1) it lacks capability for modeling non-motorized modes such as bicycles, (2) it is inadequate for modeling multiple vehicle types sharing the same roadway space, and (3) it is difficult to apply to small communities with limited resources. This dissertation recognizes these deficiencies and responds to them through the development of alternative transportation planning applications via the path flow estimator (PFE). The PFE was originally developed as a one-stage network observer capable of estimating path flows and path travel times using only traffic counts from a subset of network links. In this dissertation, the PFE is used to develop the following three transportation planning applications for addressing the three deficiencies of the four-step model: (1) a bicycle network analysis tool for non-motorized transportation planning, (2) a multi-class traffic assignment model for freight planning, and (3) a simplified travel demand forecasting model for small community planning. The first application develops a two-stage bicycle traffic assignment model for estimating/ predicting bicycle volumes on a transportation network. The first stageconsiders two key criteria (e.g., distance related attributes and safety related attributes) to generate a set of non-dominated (or efficient) paths, while the second stage determines the flow allocation to the set of efficient paths. In stage one, a bi-objective shortest path problem based on the two key attributes is developed to generate the efficient paths. In stage two, several traffic assignment methods are adopted to determine the flow allocations in a network. In addition, the two-stage ...