Trip generation and distribution modelling in Budapest

Abstract

The last decades brought social and economic changes. Together with the technical developments and more conscious mobility planning and travelling of people called for a new transport model for Budapest. Additionally, for the sake of coherent project appraisal a strategic, macro level decision supporting and project appraisal tool was developed based on open and transparent methods to give more insight for users and accommodate the best practice for all professionals. In order to reflect person-specific influence factors of the travel behaviour, based on the latest observations and house-hold surveys, 20 population segments and 14 trip purposes were identified. The numerous demand strata led to pretty realistic trip generation figures. The destination choice behaviour model is tour based instead of the most common home-based trip-pair practice. Trip distribution functions implies a gravity approach by logit functions applying general utility. The tour based model works with non-symmetric generation – attraction matrices and the distinction between home zone and non-home zone made the use of area specific variables (e.g. parking fee for non-residents) possible. The aim of the paper is to describe the model structure but also explaining what observations were made, what were the key finding in terms of transportation characteristics and what decisions led to the applied model components. The fitting to the observed volumes and the sensitivity and validity of the model is fairly good, thus against the preceding model set-ups the direct use of observed matrices was not necessary.