What You Will Learn
- Understand the basis for travel demand and the utility-maximizing assumptions in models.
- Learn about basic facts in urban travel behavior – trip purposes, travel modes, trip distance, trip origins and destinations.
- Introduce trip generation, trip distribution, mode split, and trip assignment used in zone-based transportation models.
- Critique the four-step modelling process for the types of questions addressed in contemporary transportation planning.
- Understand innovations in modeling, such as disaggregated activity and trip tour-based models.
- Be able to conceptualize how transportation models can address contemporary problems in transportation planning such as transit-oriented development.
Transportation planning has traditionally relied on economic theories in which travelers maximize their utility by choosing among travel opportunities according to travel time, cost, and convenience. A class of models, called four-step models, was developed based on these theories and found wide practice in transportation agencies. The course explains and critiques the four-step model as a way of introducing this way of thinking and then addresses other approaches, such as cognitive theories, ecological models of behavior, or prospect theory, as alternative models.
AICP CM
This course is approved for 1 AICP CM credit.
