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466060-1 Report Abstract

New Technologies and Methodologies for Evaluating and Analyzing the Implications of Various New Transportation Objectives

Naomi Ledé and Lei Yu, Texas Southern University, June 1996, 47 pp. (466060-1)

Most of the existing dynamic traffic assignment methodologies, which have been predominately travel time based, are not appropriate for use in a traffic network analysis where the environmental concerns prevail. The primary reason for this is that the travel time variables and the environmental variables, which include but are not limited to fuel consumption, vehicle emissions and traffic noise, have different sensitivities to the distribution of the vehicle’s modal events. Therefore, the travel time based and the environmental based dynamic traffic assignments should virtually result in different dynamic network flows and queues. This research presents a new approach that attempts to explicitly incorporate the multiple transportation objectives into the dynamic traffic assignment/simulation model. The dynamic traffic assignment/simulation method, instead of the static traffic assignment method, is selected in the proposed approach in order to correctly identify the time series of vehicles’ modal events, and therefore to more accurately estimate the impacts of alternative traffic and control scenarios on various travel time and environmental factors. Since the research proposes a set of new environmental based traffic assignment principles, the dynamic traffic loading can therefore be explicitly environmental based. Consider a real traffic network where the drivers strive to select the paths for travel. Most drivers are unlikely, in reality, to choose the paths based on the explicit environmental considerations. With the applications and the deployment of Advanced Traveler Information Systems and Road Congestion Pricing mechanisms, however, the traffic routing which is strictly based on a selected environmental objective is not unrealistic in the foreseeable future.

Keywords: Environmental Objective, Dynamic Assignment, Traffic Simulation

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Reference Report #466060-1