A national transportation planning model is needed for several reasons, including heavy investments in transportation infrastructures and the need to perform formal cost–benefit analyses of all medium- and large-scale transport projects. The paper describes the formulation and development of the planning model. The model is unique for the data collected and is used for analyzing nationwide travel. After careful legal review regarding privacy laws, cellular phone (CP) data were obtained for sixteen 1-week samples of 10,000 phones. In total, data for 1.04 million person-days were obtained. Data records included the unique CP identification, the antenna serving the CP, and a time stamp (date, hour, minute, second). At the minimum, a record was written each time a moving CP changed its connecting antenna. To ensure privacy, neither information nor identification of the cellular phone owner was recorded. The paper describes the structure of the planning model. The CP survey data were used only in the models for constructing person trip tables. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time that data obtained by wireless location technology (WLT) in large quantities have been used in transportation planning. The paper discusses the advantages and limitations of using WLT and presents directions for further research.
Although activity-based models (ABMs) are starting to be used for metropolitan area transportation planning and policy making, experience is lacking in the use of the wealth of information and measures that such models offer. This paper reports on the implementation of an advanced ABM developed for the Tel Aviv, Israel, metropolitan area to analyze the various transport, activity, and emissions impacts of auto restraint, transit, and land use policies. The policy implications of various scenarios are presented. The results showed that a combination of aggressive pull-and-push measures to encourage more transit and less car use had only marginal impacts on total vehicle kilometers traveled, emissions, and greenhouse gas emissions. Other findings showed no synergic effects and suggested that some policies might have had unintended outcomes. All of the policies tested led to less congestion but increased accessibility at the same time; the increased accessibility attracted more trips to the city. Overall, this study showed that ABMs could provide important advantages in the analysis of various transport policies to improve sustainable transportation development and to enable detailed analyses of the synergic effects of various policies and their impact on many indicators. The paper advances the state of the practice of the use of ABMs for policy analysis, but much more experience and insight are needed on the best way to use the rich information and abundant measures obtained from such models.
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