Travel Modelling Group Technical Advisory Committee May 8, 2013

Today’s Agenda Overview of current TMG tools & available resources TMG Toolbox EMME worksheets XTMF Getting / installing TMG tools Requirements Obstacles? Centroid Connector Generation TMG Website (tmg.utoronto.ca)

Current Tools: TMG Toolbox Suite of Tools for Emme Modeller

Current Tools: TMG Toolbox Currently contains tools for: Results Analysis Validation/Conversion with/to NCS11 Network editing including Centroid Connectors XTMF-compatible road and transit assignment scripts (converted from original macros) Python libraries for some common code

Current Tools: TMG Toolbox NCS11 A number of tools to facilitate conversion Network Editing -> Centroid Connectors For detailed discussion later “Copy Zone System” tool for porting centroids + connectors from one databank to another. Produces a shapefile illustrating connectors not copied. Network Editing -> Transit Networks “Create Time Period Networks” will be used to generate transit networks for multiple time periods

Current Tools: TMG Toolbox Assignment Tools Robust, generic ports of major assignment macros for use from Modeller or XTMF Matrices, scenarios, and attributes no longer are hard-coded Results saved into user-specified matrices Transit assignment split into separate assignment and analysis tools / modules

Current Tools: TMG Toolbox Analysis -> Screenlines: Allows screenlines to be defined by shapefiles Can be “imported” into the network as extra attributes, or used to extract results “on-the-fly”

Current Tools: TMG Toolbox Scripting tools: “Execute Python Script” Tool permits the execution of single script files (*.py), with all ‘print’ statements echoed to the logbook. The “Geometry” library contains functions for integrating Emme networks with geometric operations. “Screenline” library is the basis of all screenline tools; can also be used for scripting.

Current Tools: Emme Worksheets Transit line viewer NCS11 VDF Viewer NCS11 Node Viewer

Current Tools: XTMF Capabilities: New features: Four-step models Network parameter estimation Mode choice parameter estimation Network connector optimization Population synthesis New features: Linked Parameters Integrated documentation

Software/Hardware Requirments TMG Toolbox: Emme Modeller XTMF: Windows XP or newer .NET framework version 4.0 or higher. GPU requirements (optional): DirectX 11 graphics card

Centroid Connectors Objective: Create an algorithm for generating centroid connectors for a given network and a given zone system Challenges: Easy to define and apply hard constraints, but difficult to define an objective function Cannot reasonably assume that zone internal roads are not present (especially when applying an older zone system to a newer network) Not much experience to draw upon in the literature

Algorithm Framework Apply well-defined constraints to the network’s nodes to prevent unrealistic connections (e.g., to highway on- and off-ramps). Choose from a set of possible centroid connector configurations. Avoid an algorithm in which processing order matters by avoiding constraints which depend on the connections made by other zones.

Algorithm Framework Feasible Nodes: The set of nodes in the network for which a centroid connection is feasible. Candidate Nodes: The set of nodes which are candidates for connection to a given zone centroid. Configuration: A selected sub-set of a zone’s candidate nodes which represents a potential configuration of connectors.

Proposed CCGEN steps For all zones Create the set of feasible network nodes by applying a user-specified criteria. For each zone Get the set of candidate nodes by searching the set of feasible nodes (usually based on distance). Reduce the set of candidate nodes which result in connectors which cross user-specified boundaries. Reduce the set of candidate nodes to the user-speicifed limit by removing the furthest nodes first. Iterate through all of the potential combinations of centroid connectors, from one connection up to a user-specified maximum, and calculate a utility value for each. Create connectors for the combination with the highest utility.

CCGEN Utility Function What is a ‘good’ configuration of centroid connectors? What makes one configuration ‘better’ than another? Some ideas: Try to distribute the connectors radially around the centroid. Try to prioritize certain nodes (i.e., mid-block nodes, or nodes very close to the centroid). Others…?

TMG Website http://tmg.utoronto.ca All TMG TAC and SC members already have accounts. Your account is “[First Name] [Last Name]”, and the default password is “ChangePassword” (case-sensitive)