Building Confidence in TFlowFuzzy Trip Table Development, Validation and Application in Downtown Windsor

Outline Study Overview Traditional Approach Trip Table Development with TFlowFuzzy Ways to Improve the Method Conclusions

Overview: City of Windsor Located across the Detroit River from Detroit, Michigan Population of 323,000 in 2006 Major auto manufacturing centre Promoting tourism industry Expansion of Casino Windsor

Overview: Study Area Tunnel to Detroit Casino Windsor Downtown Windsor

Overview: Assignment To evaluate traffic implications of road network modifications Road closures to facilitate Casino operations and expansion One-way to two-way street conversions to improve accessibility and exposure to downtown businesses

Traditional Approach Develop / utilize OD Table from survey, macro-level model, etc. Assign to VISSIM network Compare simulated volumes to observed traffic counts Adjust trip table as required Re-assign

Traditional Approach Not applicable in this case: No Survey Data No Macro-level Model Need to create a trip table for VISSIM assignment to evaluate the impact of closing a road in the Casino area

Reason for Initial Study New hotel and entertainment complex under construction at time of study Closing road proposed to facilitate valet parking and VIP entrance

Windsor Road Network and Initial Casino Study Area Potential Road Closure

TFlowFuzzy: Model Development 41 zones 102 connectors

TFlowFuzzy: Model Development Established base seed trip table 25 trips between each major gateways pair 12.5 trips between each minor gateways pair 1 trip between internal zone pairs 1 trips between gateways and internal zones Adjusted seed trip table to ground counts with TFlowFuzzy Assigned to network in VISUM and compared with ground counts

TFlowFuzzy: Analysis Results 2% 0% 1% 0% 6% 0% 1% -1% 1% 2% 1% 2%

TFlowFuzzy: Analysis Results

TFlowFuzzy: Expanded Area Initial results in small study area provided a reasonable correlation to observed conditions Client asked for analysis of other proposed downtown road network changes Network expanded to encompass other proposed changes

Windsor Road Network and Expanded Downtown Study Area Potential Road Closures Potential Two-way Conversions

TFlowFuzzy: Expanded Area Developed traffic zone system (98 zones) For each zone, surface areas by land use type estimated from Google Earth and MS Virtual Earth Applied ITE Trip rates to generate zone productions and attractions Distributed trips using logit model with unitary coefficients

TFlowFuzzy: Expanded Area Assigned initial trip table to network in VISUM Applied TFlowFuzzy procedure Assigned adjusted trip table to network in VISSIM Compared simulated flows to observed values Final trip table represents existing conditions Base to which development traffic is added

TFlowFuzzy: Analysis Results -1% 8% 8% 5% 5% 3% -4% 9%

Application of TFlowFuzzy Trip Table Trip table and site specific development traffic assigned to VISSIM network with road closures and two-way street conversions Provided intersection levels-of-services throughout the network Allowed for the evaluation of several network scenarios.

Application of TFlowFuzzy Trip Table Base Case – Existing One-way Network

Application of TFlowFuzzy Trip Table Alternative – Complete Two-way Network

Way to Improve Method Refine trip generation and distribution method Improve function for trip distribution Consider gravity model Review weightings of gateway zones Refine trip generation through more detailed land use data City records to obtain floor space or other statistics for land use if available

Conclusions Trip tables synthesized using TFlowFuzzy provided adequate correlation between observed and modelled conditions Method provides reasonable approach when no survey data or macro-level model is available