Large-scale prediction of trip production is essential for origin–destination (OD) demand estimation and prediction. One of the main challenges in predicting trip production patterns lies in addressing spatial-temporal correlations and variations. Whereas many studies focus on temporal correlations, very few consider spatial adjacency between traffic analysis zones (TAZ) as explanatory variables. This research proposes a method that integrates a graph convolutional neural network (GCN) into a long short-term memory network (LSTM) to do exactly that. By introducing a nationwide graph that encodes the adjacency of TAZs, spatial heterogeneity is considered in the prediction process, and a single prediction model is trained for the entire network, thereby avoiding the need to train multiple separate models and potentially reducing overall training overhead, while increasing the prediction accuracy. Moreover, with this model, we investigate the effect of spatial scale on spatial uncertainty and prediction accuracy and analyze prediction errors, residual patterns, and their associations with socio-spatial features at different spatial scales. The findings of this research have important implications for improving OD demand prediction models and provide valuable insights into the role of spatial scale and socio-spatial features in travel demand prediction.

The advent of Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) has ushered in substantial changes in the transportation sector, particularly impacting the resilience of road networks. CAVs can exchange real-time information about road conditions, allowing them to bypass congestion and optimise their routes, thereby enhancing network resilience through dynamic rerouting. Additionally, these vehicles significantly affect road capacity, further bolstering the overall resilience of the network. As a result, it is essential to assess the impact of CAVs on road network resilience comprehensively. However, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is a notable gap in research that thoroughly evaluates the resilience of large-scale road networks, taking into account all dimensions of resilience, such as redundancy, robustness, and recovery speed. This paper aims to fill this gap by assessing the influence of CAVs on the resilience of a large-scale road network in Belgium. Utilising a simulation-based approach, the study quantifies the network's resilience triangle, addressing all facets of network resilience. The findings reveal that the integration of CAVs can markedly improve network resilience under various scenarios, with improvements ranging from 4.4% at a 10% penetration rate to 59.9% at full penetration. These insights are valuable for researchers and policymakers focused on the implementation of autonomous vehicles.

This paper presents an efficient solution method for the matrix estimation problem using a static capacity constrained traffic assignment (SCCTA) model with residual queues. The solution method allows for inclusion of route queuing delays and congestion patterns besides the traditional link flows and prior demand matrix whilst the tractability of the SCCTA model avoids the need for tedious tuning of application specific algorithmic parameters. The proposed solution method solves a series of simplified optimization problems, thereby avoiding costly additional assignment model runs. Link state constraints are used to prevent usage of approximations outside their valid range as well as to include observed congestion patterns. The proposed solution method is designed to be fast, scalable, robust, tractable and reliable because conditions under which a solution to the simplified optimization problem exist are known and because the problem is convex and has a smooth objective function. Four test case applications on the small Sioux Falls model are presented, each consisting of 100 runs with varied input for robustness. The applications demonstrate the added value of inclusion of observed congestion patterns and route queuing delays within the solution method. In addition, application on the large scale BBMB model demonstrates that the proposed solution method is indeed scalable to large scale applications and clearly outperforms the method mostly used in current practice.

Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) data provides valuable insights into travel demand patterns by capturing people's consecutive locations. A major challenge, however, is how the polling interval (PI; the time between consecutive location updates) affects the accuracy in reconstructing the spatio-temporal travel patterns. Longer PIs will lead to lower accuracy and may even miss shorter activities or trips when not properly accounted for. In this paper, we analyze the effects of the PI on the ability to reconstruct an origin–destination (OD) matrix. We also propose and validate a new data-driven method that improves accuracy in case of longer PIs. The new method first learns temporal patterns in activities and trips, based on travel diaries, that are then used to infer activity-travel patterns from the (sparse) GSM traces. Both steps are data-driven thus avoiding any a priori (behavioral, temporal) assumptions. To validate the method we use synthetic data generated from a calibrated agent-based transport model. This gives us ground-truth OD patterns and full experimental control. The analysis results show that with our method it is possible to reliably reconstruct OD matrices even from very small data samples (i.e., travel diaries from a small segment of the population) that contain as little as 1% of the population’s movements. This is promising for real-life applications where the amount of empirical data is also limited.

To improve the accuracy of large-scale strategic transport models in congested conditions, this paper presents a straightforward extension of a static capacity-constrained traffic assignment model into a semi-dynamic version. The semi-dynamic model is more accurate than its static counterpart as it relaxes the empty network assumption, but, unlike its dynamic counterpart, maintains the stability and scalability properties required for application in large-scale strategic transport model systems. Applications show that, contrary to static models, semi-dynamic queue sizes and delays are very similar to dynamic outcomes, whereas only the congestion patterns differ due to the omission of spillback. The static and semi-dynamic models are able to reach user equilibrium conditions, whereas the dynamic model cannot. On a real-world transport model, the static model omits up to 76% of collective losses. It is therefore very likely that the empty network assumption influences (policy) decisions based on static model outcomes.

This paper explores temporal patterns in travel production using a full month of production data from traffic analysis zones (TAZ) in the (entire) Netherlands. The mentioned data is a processed aggregated derivative (due to pr ivacy concerns) from GSM traces of a Dutch telecommunication company. This research thus also sheds light on whether such a processed data source is representative of both regular and non-regular patterns in travel production and how such data can be used for planning purposes. To this end, we construct normalized matrix (heatmap) representations of weekly hour-by-hour travel production patterns of over 1200 TAZs, which we cluster using K-means combined with deep convolutional neural networks (inception V3) to extract relevant features. A silhouette score shows that three dominant clusters of temporal patterns can be discerned (K=3). These three clusters have distinctly different within-day and day-to-day production patterns in terms of peak period intensity over different days of the week. Subsequently, a spatial analysis of these clusters reveals that the differences can be related to (easily observable) land-use features such as urbanization levels (i.e., Urban, Rural, and mixed-level). To substantiate this hypothesis and the usefulness of this clustering result, we apply an OVR-SMOTE-XGBoost ensemble classification model on the land-use features of the TAZs (i.e., to identify their cluster). The results of our clustering analysis show that given the land-use features, the overall production patterns are identifiable. Further analysis of the mixed-level areas shows a more complex relationship between temporal heterogeneity and spatial characteristics. Population density seems to impose additional uncertainty on the temporal patterns. All in all, feature selection and spatial and temporal discretization play essential roles in identifying the dominant trip production patterns. These findings are directly useful for data-driven estimation and prediction of demand time series. Furthermore, this study provides further insights into people's mobility, relevant for transportation analysis and policies.

Due to the environmental crisis, there is a need for a more conscious and integrating design process within the field of urban infrastructure development. Through cooperation between civil engineering and spatial design resilience of the built environment can be increased. Delft University of Technology investigates interdisciplinary design as a method and incorporates this into its MSc-level education of students in the faculties of civil engineering and architecture. The focus of the research was on the reconstruction projects after disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis. By way of surveys of the participating students, the effectiveness of the interdisciplinary design methods used, and the interpretation of the terms multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary are revealed. From survey results about understanding of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary it can be concluded that interdisciplinary design should entail a conscious and orchestrated process in which the disciplines present their ideas within a shared value system before systematic integration. The challenges are at personal and cognitive levels, an open attitude is necessary to be able to perceive and react, process and understand, retrieve information. Only then decisions on - and production of - appropriate responses come out of co-creation between engineering within the spatial design process.

Predictions on Public Transport (PT) ridership are beneficial as they allow for sufficient and cost-efficient deployment of vehicles. On an operational level, this relates to short-term predictions with lead times of less than an hour. Where conventional data sources on ridership, such as Automatic Fare Collection (AFC) data, may have longer lag times and contain no travel intentions, in contrast, trip planner data are often available in (near) real-time and are used before traveling. In this paper, we investigate how such data from a trip planner app can be utilized for short-term bus ridership predictions. This is combined with AFC data (in this case smart card data) to construct a ground truth on actual ridership. Using informative variables from the trip planner dataset through correlation analysis, we develop 3 supervised Machine Learning (ML) models, including k-nearest neighbors, random forest, and gradient boosting. The best-performing model relies on random forest regression with trip planner requests. Compared with the baseline model that depends on the weekly trend, it reduces the mean absolute error by approximately half. Moreover, using the same model with and without trip planner data, we prove the usefulness of trip planner data by an improved mean absolute error of 8.9% and 21.7% and an increased coefficient of determination from a 5-fold cross-validation of 7.8% and 18.5% for two case study lines, respectively. Lastly, we show that this model performance is maintained even for the trip planner requests with prediction lead times up to 30 min ahead, and for different periods of the day. We expect our methodology to be useful for PT operators to elevate their daily operations and level of service as well as for trip planner companies to facilitate passenger replanning, in particular during peak hours.

Transport infrastructure owners are moving from reactive toward proactive infrastructure management. This involves computation of costs associated with failure or maintenance, including expected transport delays. These delays are often computed by multiplying additional travel time by the number of travellers. However, this does not reflect the process of decision-making by travellers using the infrastructure asset, such as mode choices, departure time changes and trip cancellations to reduce time wasted in a traffic jam. Therefore, we introduce a multi-modal transport model that simulates travellers’ behaviour after a large-scale infrastructure failure at a critical node in the European TEN-T network. We use a novel approach of modelling the region around the infrastructure disruption in a very detailed manner, whereas the rest of Europe is modelled in a more basic way. This enables us to model impacts of disruptions in high detail, whereas also effects throughout Europe are considered, within reasonable computation time.

By extending static traffic assignment with explicit capacity constraints, quasi-dynamic traffic assignment yields more realistic results while avoiding many disadvantages of a dynamic assignment. We analyse the computation of travel times in quasi-dynamic assignment models. We formulate and check requirements for the correctness of resulting travel times, addressing both the calculation of travel times for individual routes and links itself, as well as the differences between travel times of different travel choices. We demonstrate that existing approaches for travel time computation in the literature fail to satisfy all requirements and derive a new link travel time formula from the vertical queuing theory that does meet all requirements. We discuss expected changes to assignment results and methodological advantages for pathfinding and model extensions, including horizontal queuing. The new link travel time formulation is finally applied to three example scenarios from literature.

This paper analyzes the observed decision-making behavior of a sample of individuals impacted by Hurricane Irma in 2017 (n = 645) by applying advanced methods based in discrete choice theory. Our first contribution is identifying population segments with distinct behavior by constructing a latent class choice model for the choice whether to evacuate or not. We find two latent segments distinguished by demographics and risk perception that tend to be either evacuation-keen or evacuation-reluctant and respond differently to mandatory evacuation orders. Evacuees subsequently face a multi-dimensional choice composed of concurrent decisions of their departure day, departure time of day, destination, shelter type, transportation mode, and route. While these concurrent decisions are often analyzed in isolation, our second contribution is the development of a portfolio choice model (PCM), which captures decision-dimensional dependency (if present) without requiring choices to be correlated or sequential. A PCM reframes the choice set as a bundle of concurrent decision dimensions, allowing for flexible and simple parameter estimation. Estimated models reveal subtle yet intuitive relations, creating new policy implications based on dimensional variables, secondary interactions, demographics, and risk-perception variables. For example, we find joint preferences for early-nighttime evacuations (i.e., evacuations more than three days before landfall and between 6:00 pm to 5:59 am) and early-highway evacuations (i.e., evacuations more than three days before landfall and on a route composed of at least 50% highways). These results indicate that transportation agencies should have the capabilities and resources to manage significant nighttime traffic along highways well before hurricane landfall.