Dynamic, Integrated Model System: Sacramento-Area Application, Volume 1: Summary Report (2014)

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The Second S T R A T E G I C H I G H W A Y R E S E A R C H P R O G R A M TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH BOARD WASHINGTON, D.C. 2014 www.TRB.org REPORT S2-C10B-RW-1 Dynamic, Integrated Model System: Sacramento-Area Application Volume 1: Summary Report Cambridge SyStematiCS, inC. in aSSoCiation with SaCramento area CounCil of governmentS univerSity of arizona univerSity of illinoiS, ChiCago Sonoma teChnology, inC. fehr and PeerS

Subject Areas Environment Highways Planning and Forecasting

SHRP 2 Reports Available by subscription and through the TRB online bookstore: www.TRB.org/bookstore Contact the TRB Business Office: 202-334-3213 More information about SHRP 2: www.TRB.org/SHRP2 SHRP 2 Report S2-C10B-RW-1 ISBN: 978-0-309-27382-4 © 2014 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Copyright Information Authors herein are responsible for the authenticity of their materials and for obtaining written permissions from publishers or persons who own the copy- right to any previously published or copyrighted material used herein. The second Strategic Highway Research Program grants permission to repro- duce material in this publication for classroom and not-for-profit purposes. Per- mission is given with the understanding that none of the material will be used to imply TRB, AASHTO, or FHWA endorsement of a particular product, method, or practice. It is expected that those reproducing material in this document for educational and not-for-profit purposes will give appropriate acknowledgment of the source of any reprinted or reproduced material. For other uses of the material, request permission from SHRP 2. Note: SHRP 2 report numbers convey the program, focus area, project number, and publication format. Report numbers ending in “w” are published as web documents only. Notice The project that is the subject of this report was a part of the second Strategic Highway Research Program, conducted by the Transportation Research Board with the approval of the Governing Board of the National Research Council. The members of the technical committee selected to monitor this project and review this report were chosen for their special competencies and with regard for appropriate balance. The report was reviewed by the technical committee and accepted for publication according to procedures established and overseen by the Transportation Research Board and approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council. The opinions and conclusions expressed or implied in this report are those of the researchers who performed the research and are not necessarily those of the Transportation Research Board, the National Research Council, or the program sponsors. The Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, the National Research Council, and the sponsors of the second Strategic Highway Research Program do not endorse products or manufacturers. Trade or manufacturers’ names appear herein solely because they are considered essential to the object of the report. The Second Strategic Highway Research Program America’s highway system is critical to meeting the mobility and economic needs of local communities, regions, and the nation. Developments in research and technology—such as advanced materials, communications technology, new data collection technologies, and human factors science—offer a new oppor- tunity to improve the safety and reliability of this important national resource. Breakthrough resolution of significant trans- portation problems, however, requires concentrated resources over a short time frame. Reflecting this need, the second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2) has an intense, large-scale focus, integrates multiple fields of research and technology, and is fundamentally different from the broad, mission-oriented, discipline-based research programs that have been the mainstay of the highway research industry for half a century. The need for SHRP 2 was identified in TRB Special Report 260: Strategic Highway Research: Saving Lives, Reducing Conges- tion, Improving Quality of Life, published in 2001 and based on a study sponsored by Congress through the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21). SHRP 2, modeled after the first Strategic Highway Research Program, is a focused, time- constrained, management-driven program designed to comple- ment existing highway research programs. SHRP 2 focuses on applied research in four areas: Safety, to prevent or reduce the severity of highway crashes by understanding driver behavior; Renewal, to address the aging infrastructure through rapid design and construction methods that cause minimal disrup- tions and produce lasting facilities; Reliability, to reduce conges- tion through incident reduction, management, response, and mitigation; and Capacity, to integrate mobility, economic, envi- ronmental, and community needs in the planning and designing of new transportation capacity. SHRP 2 was authorized in August 2005 as part of the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU). The program is managed by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) on behalf of the National Research Council (NRC). SHRP 2 is conducted under a memorandum of understanding among the American Associa- tion of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), and the National Academy of Sciences, parent organization of TRB and NRC. The program provides for competitive, merit-based selection of research contractors; independent research project oversight; and dissemination of research results.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. On the authority of the charter granted to it by Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone is president of the National Academy of Sciences. The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achieve- ments of engineers. Dr. C. D. (Dan) Mote, Jr., is president of the National Academy of Engineering. The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, on its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Victor J. Dzau is president of the Institute of Medicine. The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy’s purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone and Dr. C. D. (Dan) Mote, Jr., are chair and vice chair, respectively, of the National Research Council. The Transportation Research Board is one of six major divisions of the National Research Council. The mission of the Transportation Research Board is to provide leadership in transportation innovation and progress through research and information exchange, conducted within a setting that is objective, interdisci- plinary, and multimodal. The Board’s varied activities annually engage about 7,000 engineers, scientists, and other transportation researchers and practitioners from the public and private sectors and academia, all of whom contribute their expertise in the public interest. The program is supported by state transportation departments, federal agencies including the component administrations of the U.S. Department of Transporta- tion, and other organizations and individuals interested in the development of transportation. www.TRB.org www.national-academies.org

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work was sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration in cooperation with the American Asso- ciation of State Highway and Transportation Officials. It was conducted in the second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2), which is administered by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies. This project was managed by Stephen J. Andrle, SHRP 2 Deputy Director. This research was performed by Cambridge Systematics, Inc., supported by the Sacramento Area Coun- cil of Governments (SACOG); University of Arizona; University of Illinois, Chicago; Sonoma Technology, Inc.; and Fehr and Peers. Thomas Rossi, Cambridge Systematics, Inc., was the principal investigator. The other authors of this report are Jason Lemp, Rich Margiotta, Scott Meeks, and Michalis Xyntarakis of Cam- bridge Systematics; Eric Petersen and Lin Zhang, formerly of Cambridge Systematics; Bruce Griesenbeck of SACOG; Yi-Chang Chiu of the University of Arizona; Mark Hickman, currently of the University of Queensland, who performed this work while with the University of Arizona; Song Bai of Sonoma Technol- ogy, Inc.; and Jane Lin of the University of Illinois, Chicago. The authors acknowledge the contributions to this research from Vassili Alexiadis, Eric Ziering, Gerard Vaio, Lawrence Liao, Tazeen Mahtab, and Moshe Ben-Akiva of Cambridge Systematics; Binu Abraham and Gordon Garry of SACOG; Brenda Bustillos, Alireza Khani, Eric Nava, and Hyunsoo Noh of the University of Arizona; Suriya Vallamsundar of the University of Illinois, Chicago; Doug Eisinger of Sonoma Technology; and David Robinson and Kwasi Donkor of Fehr and Peers. SHRP 2 STAff Ann M. Brach, Director Stephen J. Andrle, Deputy Director Neil J. Pedersen, Deputy Director, Implementation and Communications Cynthia Allen, Editor Kenneth Campbell, Chief Program Officer, Safety JoAnn Coleman, Senior Program Assistant, Capacity and Reliability Eduardo Cusicanqui, Financial Officer Richard Deering, Special Consultant, Safety Data Phase 1 Planning Shantia Douglas, Senior Financial Assistant Charles Fay, Senior Program Officer, Safety Carol Ford, Senior Program Assistant, Renewal and Safety Jo Allen Gause, Senior Program Officer, Capacity James Hedlund, Special Consultant, Safety Coordination Alyssa Hernandez, Reports Coordinator Ralph Hessian, Special Consultant, Capacity and Reliability Andy Horosko, Special Consultant, Safety Field Data Collection William Hyman, Senior Program Officer, Reliability Linda Mason, Communications Officer Reena Mathews, Senior Program Officer, Capacity and Reliability Matthew Miller, Program Officer, Capacity and Reliability Michael Miller, Senior Program Assistant, Capacity and Reliability David Plazak, Senior Program Officer, Capacity and Reliability Rachel Taylor, Senior Editorial Assistant Dean Trackman, Managing Editor Connie Woldu, Administrative Coordinator

F O R EWO R D Stephen J. Andrle, SHRP 2 Deputy Director This report will be of interest to professionals who use travel demand and network assign- ment models as part of the transportation planning process. The goal of this research was to improve urban-scale modeling and network procedures to address operations or spot improvement that affects travel-time choice, route choice, mode choice, reliability, or emis- sions. Such improvements may include traveler information, expanded transit service, pric- ing, reversible lanes, or improved bottlenecks. Operational improvements like these are difficult to model on an urban-area scale using existing tools. A secondary goal was to facili- tate further development and deployment of these or similar procedures. The goals were addressed by building a proof-of-concept dynamic integrated model in two urban areas: Jacksonville, Florida, and Sacramento, California. The report describes the Sacramento, California, integration of the activity-based demand model DaySim; a dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) model, DynusT; and a transit network simulation model, FAST-TrIPs. All are open-source products. Integration means that a feed- back loop was built between the demand and network assignment model systems. All of the demographic, highway network, and transit service data required to run the model set were assembled, and the feedback between the demand model and the DTA was tested in a subarea of Sacramento and on the full urban network. A Volume 2 report describes the application of DynusT and FAST-TrIPs in detail. A companion report and model set are available for the application in Jacksonville, Florida. This work has the same objective and uses DaySim as the demand model but uses TRANSIMS for the highway network assignment. Both model sets and software Start-up Guides are available from the Federal Highway Administration. Travel demand models have been used for more than half a century to determine the need for and estimate the usage of proposed new highway and transit systems. The majority of such models use Traffic Analysis Zones to aggregate demographic data and estimate inter- zonal travel demand for large time blocks (such as morning peak period). The interzonal demand is assigned to a link and node network to estimate likely roadway volumes. Activity-based travel demand models are based on the disaggregate travel activity of indi- vidual travelers, not the aggregate behavior of all the travelers in a zone. They have the potential to better simulate behaviors such as time-of-day choice, route choice, mode choice, and trip chaining. As with real travelers, information on the state of the network is needed to make choices. The feedback loop from the network assignment may cause a simulated “traveler” to change route, time of day, or mode in response to network congestion. The model set iterates until convergence is reached—travel volumes and modes are stable after successive iterations. Activity-based models have been available for some time but are not widely used in pro- duction planning work. Dynamic traffic assignment models are network simulation tools that represent network travel conditions. Such simulation models are used for subarea traffic analysis but have not been linked to a demographically based demand model and used at the urban-area scale. This project integrated the supply and demand side of transportation

demand forecasting in order to test operational improvements to the highway system as well as capacity enhancements. The Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) used the model set to test trans- portation alternatives. The results are proof-of-concept in nature. The integrated model works and demonstrates potential improved sensitivity to policies that affect regional travel. However, the model did not converge as hoped, so it was not possible to fully calibrate it prior to testing by SACOG. The integrated model sets built for this project are available as a basis for implementing a similar approach in other urban areas.

C O N T E N T S 1 Executive Summary 2 Model Components 3 Software Approach 3 Model Component Revisions 4 Model Integration 5 Model Application 5 Model Testing 6 Analysis of Policies and Alternatives of Interest to Planning Agencies 9 Conclusions 13 CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Project Overview and Objectives 13 Modeling Approach 15 Software Approach 15 Report Organization 16 CHAPTER 2 Development of the Integrated Model 16 Original Models 22 Revisions to Original Models for SHRP 2 C10B 34 Model Integration 38 CHAPTER 3 Model Implementation 38 Software Implementation Process 40 Model Inputs 42 Model Application 42 Model Testing 53 Testing of the DynusT-MOVES Integration 59 CHAPTER 4 Analysis of Policies and Alternatives of Interest to Planning Agencies 60 Test Scenarios 60 Testing and Performance Metrics 61 Test Results 93 CHAPTER 5 Conclusions and Lessons Learned 93 What Users Need to Know to Run the C10B Integrated Model 94 Lessons Learned and Improvements Needed 96 Future Applications and Additional Research 97 References