A bi-level model of daily trip chains

Abstract

Some of the well-known strategic urban transport models (such as ESTRAUS, VISUM and EMME-2), simplify the treatment of complex urban systems in order to represent reality in a single scale system for each of the most relevant dimensions: time, space and population. Thus, most of these models lack of certain characteristics that approaches based on the concept of activity-based analysis address by understanding travel demand as derived from interdependent activities and trips throughout a day. The paper presents a methodology that aims at introducing a more detailed analysis of processes and elements on different levels concerning users, space, time, activities (trip purposes) and travel modes. Thus, it makes a first attempt to design a multi-scale model of the urban system, concentrating the research on a bi-level model, with micro and macro scales, formulated to describe the activities and trips performed in a single day by a heterogeneous population.