Project R-2684

The inclusion of monetary constraints in activity-based models to account for the economic uncertainty of long term predictions of travel demand. (Research)

The importance of including monetary constraints in modern travel demand models has been recognized in the context of long-term mobility decisions such as residential location, job location and car possession, but the constraints are seldom incorporated in models predicting day-by-day activity. To this end, monetary constraints relevant to modern travel demand models will be identified by analyzing various datasets available within the research group, and a methodology to include the identified constraints within the existing FEATHERS framework will be developed. In addition to the lack of day-by-day monetary constraints, current models often do not explicit address the degree of uncertainty in travel forecast. As transportation models are used to predict the likely impacts of various policy measures such as congestion charging, it is imminent for decision-making to have an estimate not only of the most likely outcome, but also to know the possible range and variability of future transport predictions. Therefore in this project, uncertainty in travel forecasting will explicitly taken into account by quantifying both uncertainty due to the fact that future values of the explanatory variables are unknown and uncertainty due to the use of estimates instead of true values.

01 October 2010 - 30 September 2013