Calgary Regional Transportation Modelling Support
HBA Specto Incorporated and its principal staff have served as expert advisors to the City of Calgary regarding ongoing transportation model development and application work almost continuously from 1992 up to the present. This has included support and advice on planning and coordinating model development and data collection activities, design and coordination of large-scale household travel and household activity diary surveys, model specification and the sequence of estimation, calibration and validation, guidance in implementation and application, managing requests for model use, staff requirements and staff training – the full range of activities required in the application of transportation modelling in support of design and analysis is covered.
A series of household travel models have been designed, developed, implemented and applied, starting with a model covering motorized trips in the AM Peak Period, moving to a model of all trips more than 100 metres over 24 hours with elastic trip generation, destination choice, time-of-day choice, mode split for nine alternative modes, and peak spreading using a nested logit structure implemented within the EMME/2 Software, and including a micro-simulation model of tours by urban commercial vehicles. This required the design and implementation of a system to integrate an aggregate, equilibrium model with a fully disaggregate, simulation model. A tour-based model of weekend travel by households and a model of daily activity pattern formation using time as a continuous variable have been explored. Currently, HBA Specto is providing advice and assistance in the development of an activity-based micro-simulation model of household travel over 24 hours intended to replace the previous aggregate model. City of Calgary staff are working together with HBA Specto staff in order to establish in-house capabilities in the operation of this new model system, including application and interpretation where micro-simulation variance must be taken into account in a practical context.
