Title: Modeling Transportation Systems: Past, Present, and Future
Abstract: The Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA) Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center (TFHRC) initiated research on transportation modeling and simulation almost 40 years ago. Since then, researchers at TFHRC has lead numerous transportation simulation studies. This article provides a history of modeling and simulation research at TFHRC, reviews several current research projects that use computer simulation tools, and discusses how the concepts and analysis testbed at the TFHRC’s new Transportation Operations Laboratory (TOL) will advance the future of modeling and simulation. In the early 1970s, FHWA led the development of NETwork SIMulation (NETSIM), a microscopic traffic simulation model for urban networks, and, in the 1980s, the development of FREeway SIMulation (FRESIM), a microscopic simulation for freeways. Two decades later, NETSIM and FRESIM were merged into a single microscopic model, CORSIM, and the Traffic Software Integrated System (TSIS) software package was developed. For many years, TSIS/CORSIM was the only viable microscopic traffic simulation model available to practitioners, but there are now several commercial traffic simulation packages. Rather than compete with commercial simulation vendors by continuing to develop TSIS/CORSIM, the FHWA shifted its role to fostering an environment of public-private cooperation through research products that benefit the entire traffic simulation community. Researchers at TFHRC continue to lead studies that use various types of simulation tools, including studies related to driver behavior in traffic, travel patterns in work zones, calibration of two-lane roundabouts, and autonomous control at intersections. Followup studies to these research projects will be carried out in the TOL. The lab will consist of three components: (1) a concepts and analysis testbed, (2) a data resources testbed, and (3) a cooperative vehicle-highway testbed. The new concepts and analysis testbed will incorporate a repository of transportation models to allow computer simulation runs at microscopic, mesoscopic, and macroscopic levels of analysis. This repository will allow computer simulations and visualizations of representative traffic networks and experimental strategies to improve safety, mobility, and environmental performance. The concepts and analysis testbed will support research being conducted by FHWA's emerging intelligent transportation system and exploratory advanced research projects, as well as external needs from academia and other research institutes.
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-09-01
Language: en
Type: article
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