Sustainable Transportation Modeling

加拿大和全球的城市地区正在探索通过促进步行和公共交通等影响较小的模式的使用的政策来增强可持续性的方法。交通工程师面临的挑战是开发模型来评估促进可持续发展目标的干预措施。这项研究计划旨在推进这一目标。特别令人感兴趣的是步行旅行的建模--即旅行者能够在给定的空间和时间预算内完成多种活动的步行旅行。富有成效的步行旅游使个人和家庭能够在对环境影响很小的情况下实现必要的旅行，并且只需适度的家庭资源分配。成功的徒步旅行减少了更长的距离，更具影响力的区际旅行。*在建模框架中，改进步行游览的表示是必要的。传统的方法假设旅行者基于候选区的属性来为给定的旅行目的选择目的地区，该候选区通常作为土地利用度量的函数来测量，以及该区与起点的接近程度。这种方法的固有假设是，一旦旅行者到达某个区域，该旅行者就可以访问该区域的所有属性。当然，步行旅游就不是这样了。在一些较大的区域，行人可能只有时间和精力预算，允许他们进入该区域的一小部分，因此只有一部分活动。相反，在设计良好的城市环境中，行人可能会在多个相邻区域进行活动。因此，现有的方法既缺乏总的空间分辨率，也缺乏对分区结构内活动分布的了解，从而无法适当地模拟行人旅游。*为了解决这些限制，该程序将实现这些目标。首先，使用现有的智能手机应用程序，将收集一些城市环境中行人活动的额外数据。根据这些数据，将观察到步行旅游在持续时间和距离上的分布。将开发和应用更先进的衡量标准来量化土地利用的多样性和密度。然后，将测试这些指标和建筑环境的其他表示在确定步行游览的空间和时间边界方面的解释能力。利用这些分析的结果，可以根据与行人活动直接相关的土地利用特性来重新评估和重新定义用于出行预测模型的传统地带性结构。然后，可以重新校准和验证这些模型，以确定它们在非常局部的尺度上预测行人行为的能力。有了这些更复杂的模型，交通运输专业人员将更好地评估促进可持续发展目标的基础设施或运营变化。

Urban regions in Canada and globally are exploring methods to enhance sustainability through policies to advance the use of lower-impact modes, such as walking and public transportation. Transportation engineers are challenged to develop models to evaluate interventions that advance sustainability goals. This research program aims to further this objective. Of particular interest is the modeling of pedestrian tours - walking trips on which travelers are able to accomplish multiple activities within a given spatial and temporal budget. Productive pedestrian tours allow individuals and household to achieve their necessary travel with few environmental impacts and with only modest household resource allocation. Successful pedestrian tours reduce longer distance, higher impact interzonal travel. ******In a modeling framework advancements are necessary to improve the representation of pedestrian tours. Conventional approaches assume that travelers choose a destination zone for a given trip purpose based on the attributes of candidate zones, typically measured as a function of land use metrics, and the proximity of that zone to the origin. The inherent assumption in this approach is that once a traveler reaches a zone, that traveler has access to all of the attributes of that zone. Naturally, this is not the case with pedestrian tours. In some large zones, a pedestrian may only have a budget of time and effort that allows them to access a small portion of the zone and, as a result, only a subset of activities. Conversely, in a well designed urban environment, a pedestrian may have access to activities in multiple adjacent zones. Thus the existing approach lacks both total spatial resolution and an understanding of the distribution of activities within a zonal structure to appropriately model pedestrian tours.******To address these limitations, this program will accomplish these goals. First, using an existing smartphone app, additional data will be gathered on pedestrian activities in a number of urban settings. From these data, observations will be made on the distribution of pedestrian tours in duration and distance. More advanced metrics will be developed and applied to quantify land use diversity and density. These metrics and other representations of the built environment will then be tested for their explanatory power in determining spatial and temporal boundaries on pedestrian tours. Using the results of these analyses, conventional zonal structures for travel forecasting models can be reassessed and redefined as a function of land use properties that are directly relevant to pedestrian activities. The models can then be re-calibrated and validated for their ability to predict pedestrian behavior on a very local scale. With these more sophisticated models, transportation professionals will be better positioned to evaluate infrastructure or operational changes that advance sustainability goals.