Sustainable Transportation Modeling

加拿大和全球的城市地区正在探索通过政策促进低影响模式（如步行和公共交通）的使用来提高可持续性的方法。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。这项研究计划旨在进一步实现这一目标。特别令人感兴趣的是徒步旅行的建模-旅行者能够在给定的空间和时间预算内完成多种活动的徒步旅行。富有成效的步行旅行允许个人和家庭在很少的环境影响和只有适度的家庭资源分配的情况下实现他们必要的旅行。成功的步行旅行减少了长距离、高影响的跨区域旅行。******在建模框架中，改进行人游览的表示是必要的。传统的方法假设旅行者根据候选区域的属性（通常作为土地利用指标的函数来衡量）和该区域与原点的接近程度，为给定的旅行目的选择目的地区域。这种方法的固有假设是，一旦旅行者到达一个区域，该旅行者就可以访问该区域的所有属性。当然，这不是徒步旅行的情况。在一些较大的区域，行人可能只有时间和精力预算，允许他们进入区域的一小部分，因此只能进行一小部分活动。相反，在设计良好的城市环境中，行人可以进入多个相邻区域的活动。因此，现有的方法既缺乏总空间分辨率，也缺乏对区域结构内活动分布的理解，无法适当地模拟行人之旅。******为了解决这些限制，本计划将实现这些目标。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。从这些数据中，我们将观察到步行旅行的持续时间和距离分布。将发展更先进的量度，并应用于量化土地用途的多样性和密度。然后，这些指标和建筑环境的其他表示将被测试其在确定步行游览的空间和时间边界方面的解释力。利用这些分析的结果，可以重新评估和重新定义传统的旅行预测模型的区域结构，作为与行人活动直接相关的土地使用属性的功能。然后，这些模型可以重新校准并验证它们在非常局部的范围内预测行人行为的能力。有了这些更复杂的模型，交通专业人员将能够更好地评估基础设施或运营变化，从而推进可持续发展目标。

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.