Equilibration Procedure to Forecast Areawide Travel

Abstract

A simple supply/demand equilibrium procedure for urban areawide travel‐estimation is presented. The parameters used in this procedure are demand elasticities, trip‐making frequency rates, average trip durations, and the valuation of travel time. To make the procedure applicable in a variety of cities, these parameters are given for four city groups stratified according to size and urban structure. This generalized pivot‐point procedure is then verified using three case studies, which show that the forecasts made by the approximation procedures are comparable to observed post‐implementation traffic counts in one case, and have only small discrepancies when compared with forecasts made by traditional (detailed) methods in the other two cases. Most importantly, the research results are consistent with such theories as a constant travel‐time budget, and the temporal and spatial stability of travel parameters. This consistency is in fact the basic building block of the procedure.