Integrated agent-based microsimulation framework for examining impacts of mobility-oriented policies

Abstract

Travel demand management measures/policies are important to sustain positive changes among individuals' travel behaviour. An integrated agent-based microsimulation platform provides a rich framework for examining such interventions to assess their impacts using indicators about demand as well as supply side. This paper presents an approach, where individual schedules, derived from a lighter version of an activity-based model, are fed into a MATSIM simulation framework. Simulations are performed for two European cities i.e. Hasselt (Belgium), Bologna (Italy). After calibrating the modelling framework against aggregate traffic counts for the base case, the impacts of a few traffic management policies (restricting car access, increase in bus frequency) are examined. The results indicate that restricting car access is more effective in terms of reducing traffic from the network and also shifting car drivers/passengers to other modes of travel. The enhancement of bus infrastructure in relation to increase in frequency caused shifting of bicyclist towards public transport, which is an undesirable result of the policy if the objective is to improve sustainability and environment. In future research, the framework will be enhanced to integrate emission and air dispersion models to ascertain effects on air quality as a result of such interventions.

Engineering for transformation

“…Literature review: The last decade has seen an increasing interest in investigating the phenomenon of traffic congestion and its impact on the quality of life of citizens. Research has looked at models of systems and agents, as well as statistical analyses that respond to the variations of the automotive fleet and the implementation of TDM (Vidal et Similarly, (Adnan et al, 2021) published a research that aimed to establish scenarios for optimizing TDM for the cities of Hasselt, Belgium, and Bologna, Italy, based on models of automotive fleet growth. These models helped determine that the collective behavior of the travels made by citizens is related to their quality of life, while the optimization of public transport generates a shift of cyclists to it, bringing along undesirable results for sustainable mobility policies.…”

Recent Progress in Activity-Based Travel Demand Modeling: Rising Data and Applicability

“…Travel demand management (TDM) strategies are implemented to increase the efficiency of the transportation system and reduce traffic-related emissions. Some examples include mode shift strategies (encouraging people to use public transport) [144], time shift (to ride in off-peak hours, congestion pricing), and travel demand reduction [145] (using shared mobility service or teleworking). Shared transport services including car sharing, bike sharing, and ridesharing have been implemented in most of the transport planning systems across the world.…”

modelo de microsimulación basado en agentes para la propagación del COVID-19 en Medellín-Colombia

“…La microsimulación permite tener una representación de la propagación del virus, con base en las interacciones sociales y la heterogeneidad de la población. Así, es posible analizar el impacto de diferentes políticas de salud pública Adnan, et al (2020); Montañola-Sales, et al (2015) como el aislamiento preventivo obligatorio decretado por el gobierno nacional de Colombia.…”