Transferability and enhancement of a microsimulation model for estimating urban commercial vehicle movements

This study examines the transferability of a microsimulation framework to estimate the movements of commercial vehicles in urban areas. We build on the pioneering efforts of Hunt and Stefan (2007) from Calgary, Alberta by considering three types of movements: tour-based; fleet allocator; and internal/external. Some sub-models from Calgary are transferred, while others are newly developed. The framework is implemented and validated for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) as a case study. A list of 185,790 records of individual business establishments in the GTHA was acquired from InfoCanada to conduct the microsimulations. The achieved results are promising with favorable correlations between observed and simulated commercial vehicle flows. We conclude that the modeling framework from Calgary can be transferred and used to depict the travel patterns of commercial vehicle movements in other urban areas. This can be beneficial when refined and costly data are unavailable to study urban commercial vehicle movements. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.