Trip Generation

CIVL3420

The Big Picture

Lecture 1-2: Land-use, transport and environment
Lecture 3-4: Trip generation
Lecture 5-6: Trip distribution
Lecture 7-8: Modal Split & Traffic assignment

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 Todays Agenda
Basic definitions
Trip production modelling
Trip attraction modelling
Application issues
Trip chaining
Key learnings

Trip Generation
The first step of the four-step process
Trip Generation

Trip Distribution

Modal Split

Assignment

Attempts to answer the question:

How many trips start and end in a zone?

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 Basic Definitions - 1
Origin:
the start of a journey
Destination:
the end of a journey
Trip / journey:
one-way movement from an origin to a destination
Home Based (HB) trip:
home of the trip maker is an origin or destination

Basic Definitions - 2
Non-home based (NHB) trip:
neither starts or ends at the trip makers home
Trip production:
home end of a HB trip or the origin of a NHB trip
Trip attraction:
non-home end of a HB trip or the destination of a
NHB trip
Trip generations:
sum of trip HB and NHB trip productions

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 Classification of Trips - 1
By Purpose:
work
education
employers business
shopping
social or recreation
personal business
serve passenger
other

Classification of Trips - 2
By mode:
car, truck, motorcycle driver
car, truck motorcycle passenger
public transport passenger
walk / cycle
By time of day:
morning peak
evening peak
off-peak

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 Classification of Trips - 3
By person type:
car ownership
income and socio-economic characteristics
household size and structure
By location:
both ends of trip in study area (internal)
one / both ends of trip out of study area (external)
both ends within a zone (intra-zonal)

Factors Affecting Trip Generation

Personal trip productions:
income / car ownership
household size and structure
Personal trip attractions:
population
employment by industry
enrolments
Freight trip productions and attractions:
population
employment by industry

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 Trip Production Modelling
Growth factor modelling
Category analysis
Regression analysis

Growth Factor Modelling

Crude method
Suitable for:
developed areas
short term forecasts (eg 3 years)
external trips
Ti = Fi ti
Ti = future trips to/from zone i
ti = current trips to/from zone i
Fi = growth factor
= f (population, income, car ownership)

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 Category Analysis - 1
AKA cross-classification analysis
Common in UK and US
Estimates average trip rates as a function of
household attributes
108 categories are typical:
6 income, 3 car ownership and 6 household structure
Essentially a multiple regression with dummy
variables for each category level:
the partial regression coefficient is the trip rate

Category Analysis - 2
Problems include:
no statistical goodness-of-fit tests
cannot extrapolate beyond calibration categories
unduly large samples required (50 obs / category)
no effective way of choosing variables / categories
estimating households in each category
Categories should:
be large enough for sufficient data
minimise intra-category variation in trip rates

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 Regression Analysis 1
A dependent variable (eg Trips) is estimated
from a set of independent variables (eg
population, employment etc):
Yi = bk Xki + c + ei
c = the constant or intercept
bk = the coefficient for the kth parameter
Xki = the kth independent variable for zone i
ei = the error or disturbance term
= f (measurement or specification error)
(http://www.curvefit.com/linear_regression.htm)

Regression Analysis - 2
Most common to develop regression models
using a step-wise process
Statistical tests:
t-test = significance of independent variables
F-test = significance of the whole equation
R = proportion of variation explained
Problems include:
cannot extrapolate beyond calibration range
multi-colinearity between independent variables
heteroscedasticity (variability of the variance)

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 Zonal Based Regression
Deal with zonal total trip ends:
Tripsi = 1.23 Populationi + 1.1 Employmenti + 750
Have one regression equation per trip purpose
Are based on zonal attributes
Only explain inter-zonal variation
Normally produce high R values (> 0.75)
Have large constant terms
Are dependent upon zoning system used

Household Based Regression - 1

85% of trips are home based:
logical to consider the household as the basic unit
of trip production
Households relate to a behavioural unit
Remain stable geographically and temporally
Fewer independent variables give better
relationship forms
Greater variation between households results in
lower R values ( 0.2-0.4)
Common in Qld

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 Household Based Regression - 2
Dummy variables allows for any non-linearity
between trip rates and independent variables:
more important explanatory variables will be those
that are most associated with the trip purpose
Variability in household trip rates increases
with household size
Assumes that all members of the household
have the same level of choice:
leads to the development of person-based models

Trip Attraction Modelling

Estimates the relative attractiveness of a zone
based on its intensity of activity:
population, employment, enrolments etc
Two types of model commonly used:
linear regression
category analysis
Such methods do not take account of:
proximity of similar activities
household characteristics of the catchment

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 Matching Productions & Attractions
No guarantee that Ai = Pi
But this is required for:
conservation of matter
the next step (ie trip distribution)
Pragmatic solution is to factor Ais by f:
f = Pi / Ai
Assumes that trip production models are
better than trip attraction models:
this usually the case

Implementation Issues
The basic assumption is that model parameters
do not change with time:
trip rates can vary with socio-demographics
They are also often assumed to be
geographically stable
The problem becomes one of forecasting the
various input variables
Trip generation models ignores the impact of
transport supply / accessibility on trip making

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 Parameter Stability
Temporal stability:
the jury is still out
main limitation is cross-sectional data sets
Geographic stability:
would suggest repeatable behaviour
would tend to indicate temporal stability
would help to reduce data collection costs
trip rates maybe - assuming context similarity
trip lengths unlikely - due to different spatial patterns

Forecasting Input Variables

Average number of persons, workers and
dependents per household
Distribution of persons, workers and
dependents per household
Car ownership:
linear regression models

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 Inelasticity of Trip Generation
Major disadvantage of the four-step process:
network have no effect on trip generation
unlikely to be true for discretionary trips
One possible solution:
incorporate accessibility in trip generation model
but accessibility not significant in aggregate models
Other possibilities:
travel time budgets
forecast total time spent travelling instead of trips
found to be relatively stable over time and space

Trip Chaining
The state of the art in transport modelling
Focus on tours or sojourns of linked trips:
home work home
Existing data can tell us percentage of trips that
are part of a longer tour or sojourn
Traditional methods can be used to determine
the likely tour origin and destination zones
Challenge is to determine likely location(s) of
intermediate stops along the tour

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 Activity Modelling
Treat travel as part of set of wider household activities.
These are categorised by need or function:
subsistence (eg work)
maintenance (eg shopping)
discretionary (eg recreation)
Finite number of hours in a day/week.
Households prioritise time spent on each activity:
trip chaining
trip substitution
Structural equation models.
http://repositories.cdlib.org/itsirvine/casa/
http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=itsirvine/casa

Key Learnings
The first step of the four-step process asks how
many trips start and end in a zone?
Productions and attractions origins and
destinations
Trip production and trip attraction models:
typically based on household and zonal regression
equations respectively
Need to balance productions and attractions
Errors in forecasting input variables will be
carried through the rest of the four-step process

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 Additional Reading
Ortuzar and Willumsen Modelling Transport, p94-126
Hensher and Button Handbook of Transport Modelling, p20-26 & p42-45
http://ntl.bts.gov/DOCS/dks.html
http://tmip.fhwa.dot.gov/clearinghouse/docs/mvrcm/ch3.stm
http://www.official-
documents.co.uk/document/deps/ha/dmrb/vol12/sect2/v12s2p3e.pdf

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