Procedure for Forecasting Household Characteristics for Input to Travel-demand Models

Over the past several years, there has been a growing interest in the development of disaggregate (individual- or household-level) travel-demand models. In the case of Florida, this is evident from their efforts to incorporate socio-demographic variables (i.e., household characteristics) within the FSUTMS structure via "lifestyle" trip production models. However, the lack of a systematic procedure to forecast the household characteristics (i.e., the lifestyle variables) required by such disaggregate travel-demand models has been recognized as an important impediment to furthering these efforts for state-wide adoption. In this context, the broad focus of this research is to contribute towards the development of a methodology for comprehensively forecasting all traveler characteristics required as inputs to travel-demand forecasting models. This procedure is also referred to as synthetic population generation (SPG) in the literature. The following are the objectives of this study: (1) Develop a population synthesis procedure that accommodates both household- and person-level controls; (2) Assess the importance of controlling for person-level attributes by comparing the populations synthesized with only household level controls with the one synthesized using both household and person-level controls; (3) Validate the population synthesis by comparing the synthesized and true populations for a target year (by "back-casting"); and (4) Compare the predicted trip rates from trip generation models applied to both true and synthesized populations.

• Corporate Authors:

  University of Florida, Gainesville

  Transportation Research Center, P.O. Box 116580
  Gainesville, FL  United States  32611-6580

  Florida Department of Transportation

  605 Suwannee Street
  Tallahassee, FL  United States  32399-0450
• Authors:
  • Srinivasan, Sivaramakrishnan
  • Ma, Lu
  • Yathindra, Karun
• Publication Date: 2008-12-31

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Print
• Edition: Final Report
• Features: Appendices; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 88p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Disaggregate analysis; Forecasting; Households; Mathematical models; Travel demand
• Uncontrolled Terms: Population synthesis; Trip rates
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01128994
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: TRC-FDOT-64011-2008
• Contract Numbers: BD545, RPWO 79
• Files: TRIS, STATEDOT
• Created Date: May 19 2009 4:24PM