Bicycle traffic and its interaction with motorized traffic in an agent-based transport simulation framework

Cycling as an inexpensive, healthy, and efficient mode of transport for everyday traveling is becoming increasingly popular. While many cities are promoting cycling, it is rarely included in transport models and systematic policy evaluation procedures. The purpose of this study is to extend the agent-based transport simulation framework MATSim to be able to model bicycle traffic more realistically. The network generation procedure is enriched to include attributes that are relevant for cyclists (e.g. road surfaces, slopes). Travel speed computations, plan scoring, and routing are enhanced to take into account these infrastructure attributes. The scoring, i.e. the evaluation of simulated daily travel plans, is furthermore enhanced to account for traffic events that emerge in the simulation (e.g. passings by cars), which have an additional impact on cyclists’ decisions. Inspired by an evolutionary computing perspective, a randomizing router was implemented to enable cyclists to find realistic routes. It is discussed in detail why this approach is both feasible in practical terms and also conceptually consistent with MATSim’s co-evolutionary simulation approach. It is shown that meaningful simulation results are obtained for an illustrative scenario, which indicates that the developed methods will make real-world scenarios more realistic in terms of the representation of bicycle traffic. Based on the exclusive reliance on open data, the approach is spatially transferable

Calibration of choice model parameters in a transport scenario with heterogeneous traffic conditions and income dependency

By raising the issue of data requirements for the purpose of modal development, validation and application, this study proposes an approach to calibrate choice model parameters in heterogeneous traffic condition using minimal empirical data. For this, a real-world scenario of Patna, India is chosen. For the calibration, a Bayesian framework-based calibration technique (CaDyTS: Calibration of Dynamic Traffic Simulations) is used. Commonly available, mode-specific, hourly-classified traffic counts are used to generate full day plans of agents and their initially unknown activity locations. While the proposed approach implements location choice implicitly, the approach can be applied to a variety of other problems. Further, the effect of household income is included in the utility function to incorporate the effect of income in the decision-making process of individual travelers and to filter out inconsistencies in the daily plans, which originate from the survey data

The MATSim Open Berlin Scenario: A multimodal agent-based transport simulation scenario based on synthetic demand modeling and open data

With more diverse transport policies being proposed and the advent of novel transport services and technologies, the transport system is becoming more individualized in many aspects. Transport models, the most important tool to assess policies and schemes, need to be sufficiently expressive to address these developments. Agent-based transport models, where travelers with individual properties and the ability to act and decide autonomously are resolved individually, allow to appropriately model and analyze such policies. This paper describes the MATSim Open Berlin Scenario, a transport simulation scenario for the Berlin metropolitan area implemented in the agent-based transport simulation framework MATSim. The scenario is solely based on open data and the demand for transport is created based on a fully synthetic procedure. Contrary to most transport simulation scenarios, no information from a travel diary survey is required as input. As such, the scenario generation procedure described in this study is spatially transferable and facilitates the creation of agent-based transport simulation scenarios for arbitrary regions

Bicycle superhighway: An environmentally sustainable policy for urban transport

Bicycle is a sustainable low-carbon transport mode. However, insufficient or unplanned infrastructure leads to decrease in the share of bicycle in many cities of developing nations. In order to increase the bicycle share and to provide safer, faster and more direct routes, a bicycle superhighway is proposed for urban areas. This study identifies the potential of increase in the bicycle share. For maximum utilization of the new infrastructure, an algorithm is presented to identify the optimum number and locations of the connectors between proposed new infrastructure and existing network. Household income levels are incorporated into the decision making process of individual travellers for a better understanding of the modal shift. A real-world case study of Patna, India is chosen to show the application of the proposed superhighway. It is shown that for Patna, the bicycle share can escalate as high as 48% up from 32% by providing this kind of infrastructure. However, together with bicycles, allowing motorbikes on the superhighway limits the bicycle share to 44%. The increase in bicycle share is mainly a result of people switching from motorbike, public transport and walk to the bicycle. Further, to evaluate the benefits of the bicycle superhighway, this study first extends an emission modelling tool to estimate the time-dependent, vehicle-specific emissions under mixed traffic conditions. Allowing only bicyclists on the superhighway improves congested urban areas, reduces emissions, and increases accessibility. However, allowing motorbikes on the superhighway increases emissions significantly in the central part of the urban area and reduces accessibilities by bicycle mode to education facilities which are undesirable. This study elicits that a physically segregated high-quality bicycle superhighway will not only attract current non-cyclist travellers and increase the share of the bicycle mode, but will also reduce negative transport externalities significantly

Berlin II: CEMDAP-MATSim-Cadyts Scenario

The Berlin II scenario (also referred to as the CEMDAP-MATSim-Cadyts scenario according to the applied models in its setup), is the outcome of an alternative approach relying exclusively on freely available or easy-to-obtain input data. All of these data do not rely on individual trajectories, but instead on “anonymous” data that is aggregated so much that the data providers are no longer concerned about privacy issues

Towards an Agent-based, Integrated Land-use Transport Modeling System

AbstractThis paper reports on initial steps of an integration of the microscopic land-use simulation system SILO (Simple Integrated Land- Use Orchestrator) and the agent-based transport simulation system MATSim (Multi-Agent Transport Simulation). It is shown how information can be transferred from the land-use model to the transport model in an agent-oriented fashion and how MATSim can be used as a transport model within the SILO framework in lieu of an aggregate transport model, which SILO has been coupled with up to now. It is shown that results of the previous model structure can be reproduced by the new fully microscopic modeling system based on SILO and MATSim. It is discussed how an agent-based transfer of information can also be established in the reverse direction, i.e. from the transport model to the land-use model based on the implementation of a query architecture. Finally, it is discussed how an integration of SILO and MATSim can help addressing additional current demands for research

Integrating CEMDAP and MATSIM to Increase the Transferability of Transport Demand Models

At the time of publication C.R. Bhat was at the University of Texas at Austin, while D. Ziemke and K. Nagel were at the University of Berlin.An activity-based approach to transport demand modeling is considered the most behaviorally sound procedure to assess the impacts of transport policies. In this paper, it is investigated whether it is possible to transfer an estimated model for activity generation from elsewhere (the estimation context) and use local area (application context) traffic counts to develop a local area activity-based transport demand representation. Here, the estimation context is the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and the application context is Berlin, Germany. Results in this paper suggest that such a transfer approach is feasible, based on comparison with a Berlin travel survey. Additional studies in the future need to be undertaken to examine the stability of the results obtained in this paper.Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineerin

Accessibility in a Post-Apartheid City: Comparison of Two Approaches for Accessibility Computations

Many authors argue that issues related to interpretability, lack of data availability, and limited applicability in terms of policy analysis have hindered a more widespread use of accessibility indicators. Aiming to address these aspects, this paper presents two accessibility computation approaches applied to Nelson Mandela Bay in South Africa. The first approach, a household-based accessibility indicator, is designed to account for the high diversity both among the South African society and in terms of settlement patterns. Besides OpenStreetMap (OSM) as its main data source, this indicator uses a census and a travel survey to create a synthetic population of the study area. Accessibilities are computed based on people's daily activity chains. The second approach, an econometric accessibility indicator, relies exclusively on OSM and computes the accessibility of a given location as the weighted sum over the utilities of all opportunities reachable from that location including the costs of overcoming the distance. Neither a synthetic population nor travel information is used. It is found that the econometric indicator, although associated with much lower input data requirements, yields the same quality of insights regarding the identification of areas with low levels of accessibility. It also possesses advantages in terms of interpretability and policy sensitivity. In particular, its exclusive reliance on standardized and freely available input data and its easy portability are a novelty that can support the more widespread application of accessibility measures

Entwicklung eines regionalen, agentenbasierten Verkehrssimulationsmodells zur Analyse von Mobilitätsszenarien für die Region Ruhr

Durch sich verändernde Lebensmuster, neue Strukturen in der Arbeitswelt sowie weiterhin ungelöste Fragestellungen bzgl. Umweltwirkungen des Verkehrssektors stehen die Verkehrssysteme der Städte und Regionen vor großen Herausforderungen. Diese werden begleitet durch technische Neuerungen wie autonome Fahrzeuge und neue Antriebstechnologien. In der Region Ruhr bietet sich im Zuge der Umgestaltung der Emscherregion (vgl. EGLV, 2018) eine besondere Gelegenheit, Veränderungen im Verkehrssystem herbeizuführen, welche obige Herausforderungen aufgreifen