Modeling Passengers, Buses, and Stops in Traffic Microsimulators: MISTRANSIT Approach on PARAMICS Platform

The microscopic traffic simulation models are currently the most advanced tools for representing the movement of vehicles on a transportation network. However, the efforts spent in the microsimulation of traffic operations have been oriented mainly to the movement of cars, and little interest has been devoted in developing more sophisticated models for simulating transit systems. Even though, the commercial packages have some options to simulate transit systems, they are insufficient to properly simulate the different aspects of a realistic public transport system. The necessity of a proper microscopic simulation of public transport operations motivated this team to develop MISTRANSIT (Microscopic Simulation TRANSIT), which is a hybrid simulation tool that allows incorporating specific transit models in an existing commercial microsimulator. MISTRANSIT incorporates changes in three aspects of the modeling with respect to the existing traffic microsimulators: buses have new characteristics; passengers are incorporated in the simulation like new individual objects; and specific models to represent the interaction passenger-vehicle are also explicitly included. The platform MISTRANSIT uses PARAMICS, connected via external applications using API (Application Programming Interface). Various experiments are conducted to illustrate the flexibility of MISTRANSIT for modeling all elements and interactions of transit systems under different conditions. Promising results show how MISTRANSIT can provide answers to questions that remained open till now with regard to public transport design issues.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Cortés, Cristián Eduardo
  • Fernandez, Rodrigo
  • Burgos, Vanessa
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 86th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2007-1-21 to 2007-1-25
• Date: 2007

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: CD-ROM
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 19p
• Monograph Title: TRB 86th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers CD-ROM

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bus stops; Bus transit operations; Bus transportation; Highway operations; Hybrid simulation; Microsimulation; Passenger transportation; Public transit; Stopping; Traffic simulation; Transit operating agencies
• Identifier Terms: Paramics (Computer program)
• Subject Areas: Highways; Motor Carriers; Operations and Traffic Management; Passenger Transportation; Public Transportation;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01047586
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 07-3252
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: May 4 2007 10:27AM