QUICK RESPONSE COMMUNITY PLANNING

This report summarizes research into a shortcut procedure for travel demand modeling and forecasting for urban areas with populations under 15,000, using a geographic information systems (GIS) platform. The major focus of the project was to reduce the time and cost for the overall travel demand modeling process. Also, the level of network detail required in an appropriate travel demand model for these areas was determined. TransCAD 3.2 was used as the GIS platform. McPherson, Kansas (population 13,000) where a bypass on the north side of the city has been proposed, was selected as a case study for application of the method. Two travel demand models were developed: The low-density zoning scheme consisted of 21 Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZs) within the study area. The high-density zoning scheme consisted of 63 TAZs. On the basis of a screenline analysis and average daily vehicle travel distances estimated from the traffic volumes assigned to the network by the models, it was concluded that the travel demand model developed from the high-density network provided better results than that developed from the low-density network. However, the travel demand models for the two levels essentially performed the same with regard to the values of traffic volume assigned to the proposed bypass. It was determined that the GIS/TransCAD platform provides useful tools for data organization and analysis through graphical features. There is a need to update technical resources for applying these methods of travel demand modeling.