Understanding the influence of roadway configuration on traffic flows through a conventional traffic-assignment model

Abstract

Space syntax researchers have found that the role of roadway configuration itself is apparent in influencing urban movement. Despite this important finding, conventional traffic-assignment models are not seen to take the configurational measures into account for modeling urban movement networks. The argument is where exactly is the short fall in understanding the influence of roadway configuration on the urban phenomena of trip-making and route choice from the conventional traffic-assignment stance? This paper throws deeper insights into this question and reports the progress in the area of transportation planning research by producing theoretical evidence showing that configurational influence on urban movement gets captured through the capacity-restrained-analysis model-one of the prevalent trafficassignment models adopted by the transportation planning community. The conclusion reinforces the syntax research finding explaining that topological complexities of urban textures significantly get involved in modeling urban movement networks much of which has not been addressed before in the conventional traffic-assignment models.

A Modeling Framework: To Analyze the Relationship between Accessibility, Land Use and Densities in Urban Areas

“…Recent empirical studies have been found that there is a robust association of the configuration of the urban form (accessibility) with factors such as employment [8,9], density [10,11], the distribution of land use [6,12], and the distribution of activities in urban areas [13,14]. However, in those studies, accessibility measurement was mainly considered the cognitive behavior of human movements, which is computed based on the topological-shortest-path, but the influence of the travel speed and roadway characteristics have not been considered [12,15]. Jayasinghe et al [12] and Paul's [15] works have emphasized the importance of the impedance factor for account the travel speed and roadway characteristics.…”

“…However, in those studies, accessibility measurement was mainly considered the cognitive behavior of human movements, which is computed based on the topological-shortest-path, but the influence of the travel speed and roadway characteristics have not been considered [12,15]. Jayasinghe et al [12] and Paul's [15] works have emphasized the importance of the impedance factor for account the travel speed and roadway characteristics. Furthermore, space syntaxbased studies have mostly considered the two-dimensional connection among density and accessibility or land use and accessibility respectively [6,16,17].…”

A novel approach to model traffic on road segments of large-scale urban road networks

“…In those studies, the link cost of explanatory variables was primarily referred to the cognitive behavior of human movements (i.e., topological shortest path, the least angular turns) and the influence of the roadway characteristics such as mobility, traffic congestion, and network uniqueness have not been considered much [36]. Previously conducted studies related to vehicular traffic volume and centrality have well considered the flow of pass-by trip distribution yet have not exploded land use generated trips in relation to centrality [[36], [37], [38]]. Lowry’s [29] works on AADT estimation by employing ‘origin-destination centrality’ also could not solely rely on centrality measures as relative ‘trip production/attraction potential’ values were derived from land use data.…”

A computational approach for categorizing street segments in urban street networks based on topological properties

“…However, the common classifications based on functional attributes, as in FCS, largely neglect street segments' topological properties within a network. Without considering topological attributes, the capacity of FCS to model movement patterns or traffic flows may be undermined (Paul, 2015). For example, a local road, which is expected to have low levels of traffic volumes according to the definition of FHWA, may actually play an important role in the network if we examine its topological characteristics from the perspective of configuration analysis.…”