Implementation of a Practical Model System to Predict Long-Distance Travel for the Entire US Population

This paper describes a model system designed and implemented to simulate long-distance travel for all U.S. households. The model system was created in the final phase of FHWA research project Foundational Knowledge to Support a Long-Distance Passenger Travel Demand Modeling Framework. It is a tour-based system simulating individual tours for individual households from a synthetic population. The models are disaggregate models of auto ownership, tour generation, tour duration, travel party size, tour destination choice, and tour mode choice. The model system runs in 1 to 2 h on a standard PC, simulating a full year's long-distance tours for the entire U.S. population. The paper describes the model structure, input data, and software implementation and provides some results from the initial model calibration, validation, highway assignment, and sensitivity tests.