Existing transportation planning models deal with average conditions and treat travel as a series of sequential decisions. As such, existing models have difficulty addressing a number of areas including: - Feedback between supply, demand and land use;
- Variable road pricing, ramp metering, reversible lanes, variable speed limits, and other dynamic transportation management strategies;
- Policies affecting travel scheduling such as parking pricing, transit pricing and flexible work schedules, reversible lanes, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes, and high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes; and
- Trip chains and joint trip making within a household
The TravelWorks bundle (C10/C04/C05/C16) for integrated travel demand modeling aims to encourage more agencies to use advanced travel analysis tools and to support agencies leading the way in using these tools. These products were bundled together because of their technical and subject matter commonalities, as a result of an executive review committee consisting of AASHTO and FHWA leaders. The SHRP2 TravelWorks bundle provides approaches for developing integrated travel analysis models-that include traveler decision inputs-to better align the outcomes with real-world conditions. Transportation agencies will be able to estimate travel demand in a way that integrates activities, networks, and the environment. TravelWorks will become part of the VisionEval product maintained by the FHWA pooled fund. The goal is to maintain benefits of the tool but keep it at a modular level to allow for plug and play and for it to be scalable to the metropolitan level. | 