Public Sector Knowledge Sharing Sessions
Wednesday 20 July
Presenters
Chair: Steven Piotrowski, Technical Principal - Transport Modelling, SMEC
- Bill Chen, Senior Manager Model Development, Transport for NSW, Summary of recent foundational transport model development
- Keyvan Pourhassan, Senior Transport Modeller, Department for Infrastructure & Transport, South Australia, Tactical Adelaide Model
- Johan Brits, Manager Traffic and Road Network Performance, Main Roads Western Australia - Operational Modelling Practice Enhancement in Western Australia
- Darren Bayfield, Acting Manager – Project Evaluation, Department of Transport, Victoria, Current and Future Developments of the Victorian Integrated Transport Model (VITM)
- Blake Xu, Manager Model Assurance & Buddhini Wagasooriya, Operational Model Developer, Transport for NSW - Overview of Transport Modelling Analytics Platform (TMAP)
- Ahmed Elsergany, Assistant Director – Transport Assessment & Modelling (TAM) (Strategic/Macro Modelling), Transport Canberra & City Services, ACT, Canberra Strategic Transport Model (CSTM) Enhancements Stage 1
Bill Chen, Senior Manager Model Development, Transport for NSW, Summary of recent foundational transport model development
Bill Chen
Senior Manager Model Development, Transport for NSW
Bill is the senior manager of model development team within the Advanced Analytics and Insights (AAI) branch at TfNSW. He leads the team responsible for the development, maintenance and enhancement of transport model ecosystem. His current interest is to research city-wide foundational mesoscopic model and next-generation activity-based travel demand model.
Summary of recent foundational transport model development
Bill is the senior manager of model development team within the Advanced Analytics and Insights (AAI) branch at TfNSW. He leads the team responsible for the development, maintenance and enhancement of transport model ecosystem. His current interest is to research city-wide foundational mesoscopic model and next-generation activity-based travel demand model.
Keyvan Pourhassan, Senior Transport Modeller, Department for Infrastructure & Transport, South Australia
Keyvan Pourhassan
Senior Transport Modeller, Department for Infrastructure & Transport, South Australia
Keyvan is a Senior Transport Modeller with the South Australian Department for Infrastructure and Transport. He holds a bachelor's degree in civil engineering, a master's degree in civil and transportation engineering, and a master's degree in project management.
Keyvan is currently undertaking the PhD research in transport modelling at the University of South Australia.
Keyvan's interests are in the areas of strategic and tactical transport modelling as well as the interface between different tiers of transport models.
Tactical Adelaide Model
The Tactical Adelaide Model (TAM) is multi-tier traffic assignment model built within the Aimsun Next platform. As a multi-tier traffic assignment model, TAM includes the static assignment at the macroscopic level as well as the dynamic assignment at the mesoscopic level for the AM and PM peak periods as well the interpeak period. The extent of the model boundary for TAM is delineated by the Greater Adelaide Area and is identical to that of the Strategic Adelaide Model (SAM).
TAM has also been designed to introduce a facilitated process for building subarea models at the microscopic level.
This presentation will discuss the journey of developing the Tactical Adelaide Model as well as the challenges and achievements during the course of this journey.
Johan Brits, Manager Traffic and Road Network Performance, Main Roads Western Australia
Johan Brits
Manager Traffic and Road Network Performance, Main Roads Western Australia
Johann Brits is a transport planner with a career spanning numerous cities in Africa, the Middle East and Australia, where he has been part of the teams planning the transport strategies for some of the most significant developments and events in recent times. Including, the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, the 2020 World Expo in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and the upcoming 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Johann is now the Manager for Traffic and Road Network Performance in Western Australia, applying his skills to the optimal performance of the urban road network.
Operational Modelling Practice Enhancement in Western Australia
This presentation will discuss how over the last few years Main Roads has enhanced the operational modelling practice in Western Australia by developing modelling guidelines, providing easy access to the data, undertaking modelling research and investing in new technologies.
Darren Bayfield, Acting Manager - Project Evaluation, Department of Transport, VIC
Darren Bayfield
Acting Manager - Project Evaluation, Department of Transport
Darren is a passionate public policy advisor committed to improving social outcomes for the community. With over sixteen years experience in strategic transport modelling, economic analysis, project management, and stakeholder engagement, he has a strong focus on transparent data analysis and evaluation with a view to enhancing the quality of transport outcomes in Victoria.
He has a well-rounded approach to addressing public policy issues as his strong evidence-based policy analysis skills are supported by transport modelling, economics, contract management and financial skills. These skills have been developed though his contribution to many state government and private sector projects. His strengths lie in researching to understand the context of an issue, developing creative solutions and working collaboratively with people to build ownership of the project and its outcomes.
Current and Future Developments of the Victorian Integrated Transport Model (VITM)
The Victorian Integrated Transport Model (VITM) is the primary tool used by State Government agencies to investigate infrastructure investment options, public transport provision, transport policy and land use scenarios. The current version of VITM was developed in 2009 and calibrated with household survey data collected in 2006 and 2007. The model has undergone a light recalibration using 2016 ABS Census and VISTA 2012-2018 data, but the work made no major structural changes to the model and significant components of the demand forecasting modules remain unchanged.
In 2021, AECOM and WSP were commissioned to fully recalibrate VITM to incorporate changes in travel patterns and improve its forecasting capability. This project will transform the existing trip-based VITM into a sophisticated Activity-Based model (ABM) capable of forecasting more subtle behavioural changes, improve alignment with future transportation policy, and produce significantly more detailed outputs from which to draw deeper insights.
Integrating the ABM demand forecasting approach into the existing VITM framework allows the DoT to retain the strengths of the VITM while gaining the benefits of an ABM. The project aims to ensure that the transportation planning process can rely on a forecasting tool which can evaluate new socio-economic environments and emerging planning challenges as well as assess more conventional highway and public transport projects, and various policy and pricing-based investigations.
Blake Xu, Manager Model Assurance, Transport for NSW
Blake Xu
Transport for NSW
Blake Xu, manager model assurance in TfNSW, leads the assurance team responsible for a suite of transport model assurance projects.
Blake also contributes significantly to model development activities including new adventures such as activity-based model development. Blake's current focus is in the assurance work of Public Transport Project Model (PTPM6) and Sydney Strategic Travel Model (STM4).
Today happy to present the tool Transport Modelling Analytics Platform or TMAP used by transport models.
Overview of Transport Modelling Analytics Platform (TMAP)
Buddhini Wagasooriya, Operational Model Developer, Transport for NSW
Buddhini Wagasooriya
Operational Model Developer, Transport for NSW
Buddhini is currently working as an Operational Model Developer within the Model Development Team at TfNSW, involved in model development and assurance.
Prior to joining TfNSW, Buddhini worked as an operational modeller in the private sector specialising in microsimulation modelling.
Today happy to present the tool Transport Modelling Analytics Platform or TMAP used by transport models.
Overview of Transport Modelling Analytics Platform (TMAP)
Ahmed Elsergany, Assistant Director – Transport Assessment & Modelling (TAM) (Strategic/Macro Modelling), Transport Canberra & City Services, ACT
Ahmed Elsergany
Assistant Director - Transport Assessment & Modelling (TAM) (Strategic/Macro Modelling), Transport Canberra & City Services, ACT
Ahmed is a senior transport planner with over 25 years of experience in transport planning and modelling in Public / Governmental Sector and private consultancy. Ahmed is experienced in transportation planning, strategic modelling, traffic mesoscopic modelling and, traffic microsimulation. Ahmed has had international experiences in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (Dubai RTA).
Ahmed holds Master of Science in Transportation Policy and Management from University of Westminster, and Master of Philosophy in Geography from UNSW. Ahmed has also published several papers for international journals and conferences.
Canberra Strategic Transport Model (CSTM) Enhancements Stage 1
The CSTM is a traditional four-step trip-based strategic transport model. CSTM uses population for the trip generation step, land use (jobs, retail space, education enrolment) and generalised cost for trip distribution step, generalised cost for mode choice skimming step, and finally volume-delay functions for the traffic assignment over the transport network. The CSTM geographical coverage includes Canberra (ACT), Queanbeyan (NSW Queanbeyan Palerang Regional Council) and Yass Valley City Council (NSW).
The main purpose of the CSTM Enhancements Stage 1 is to keep the CSTM’s assumptions up to date by updating the model’s land use and networks, and to enhance the traffic assignment and public transport assignment step. Stage 1 is considered a preparatory enhancement needed for the CSTM 2021 re-calibration and validation and broader and structural CSTM enhancements “Called as Stage 2”, that meant to coincide with the Australian Census (every 5 years) to update the census-related model inputs (population, demographic and JTW information).
The motivation for the Stage 1 enhancements is as follows.
- Updates to the CSTM zoning system, land use and networks. Since the last zoning update, there have been changes in land use in both established and greenfield areas. This task will ensure that the model’s zoning system is appropriate for representing current and future land use, transport networks (roads, public transport and cycling connections), and Travel Cost Parameters. These updates will help to ensure that the current CSTM can continue to be used while the Stage 2 updates are being implemented and tested.
- Improvements to traffic and public transport assignment. The CSTM’s public transport assignment and traffic assignment parameters need to be reviewed and updated to better reflect observed route choice and travel times. These improvements should result in more accurate allocation of traffic to roads and passengers to bus and light rail in congested conditions. The proposed improvements are as follows:
- Appropriate Volume-Delay Functions: The CSTM traffic assignment uses volume-delay functions which have not been recently calibrated to observed traffic flow rates.
- Multi-Class Traffic Assignment: The CSTM contains six trip purposes (Home-Based Work (HBW), home-Based Education (HBE), Home-Based Shopping (HBS), Home Based Other (HBO), Non-Home-Based Enterprise Business (NHBEB) and Non-Home-Based Other (NHBO)). These trip purposes are aggregated into three modal assignment matrices (Car, Public Transport and Cycling), which does not provide any details on trip purpose after assignment.
- Constrained Public Transport Assignment: The CSTM public transport assignment is currently unconstrained, meaning that crowding on buses and light rail vehicles does not affect route choice.
The later Stage 2 updates will restructure the model to enable forecasting across an entire 24-hour weekday period. Among other benefits, this will enable the CSTM to be used for daily and off-peak forecasting and economic analyses.
The Stage 2 restructure will make use of 2021 Census data and 2022 HTS data, and will include updates to the trip generation, distribution, and mode choice components of the model. The restructure is expected to provide opportunities for refining trip purposes (e.g., separating out tertiary education trips); improved reporting of light rail, walking and cycling trips; and the use of more advanced travel behaviour models.