National Multi-Modal Travel Forecasts. Literature Review: Aggregate Models

This paper reviews the current state-of-the-art in the production of National Multi-Modal Travel Forecasts. The review concentrates on the UK travel market and the various attempts to produce a set of accurate, coherent and credible forecasts. The paper starts by a brief introduction to the topic area. The second section gives a description of the background to the process and the problems involved in producing forecasts. Much of the material and terminology in the section, which covers modelling methodologies, is from Ortúzar and Willumsen (1994). The paper then goes on to review the forecasting methodology used by the Department of Transport (DoT) to produce the periodic National Road Traffic Forecasts (NRTF), which are the most significant set of travel forecasts in the UK. A brief explanation of the methodology will be given. The next section contains details of how other individuals and organisations have used, commented on or attempted to enhance the DoT methodology and forecasts. It will be noted that the DoT forecasts are only concerned with road traffic forecasts, with other modes (rail, air and sea) only impacting on these forecasts when there is a transfer to or from the road transport sector. So the following sections explore the attempts to produce explicit travel and transportation forecasts for these other modes. The final section gathers together a set of issues which are raised by this review and might be considered by the project

Alleviating a form of electric vehicle range anxiety through On-Demand vehicle access

On-demand vehicle access is a method that can be used to reduce types of range anxiety problems related to planned travel for electric vehicle owners. Using ideas from elementary queueing theory, basic QoS metrics are defined to dimension a shared fleet to ensure high levels of vehicle access. Using mobility data from Ireland, it is argued that the potential cost of such a system is very low