ADAPTATION OF CONTRAM TO THE MODELING OF TEMPORAL DISTRIBUTION OF TRAFFIC DEMAND

This research investigates the feasibility of adapting CONTRAM to the problem of determining the temporal distribution of traffic demand in an urban transport network. It combines CONTRAM with a second model which determines departure time selection as a function of the output of CONTRAM. The two worked iteratively together. The research consideres the single-origin destination and the more realistic network with multiple origins and destinations and multiple routes. The resulting behaviours of demand and of traffic in the system were compared for a variety of changes to base networks. Although some of the single origin-destination pair networks reached an equilibrium solution, demand for the multiple origin-destination problem never converged and showed variations from iteration to iteration within a band. Comparisons of the results of average demand distributions showed that CONTRAM could be applied to this problem, and used to compare alternative network plans for the multiple origin-destination problem, as it provided reasonable and logical results. CONTRAM permits the modelling of a maximum of 13 time intervals. Therefore, as the time frame of study increases, a coarser approximation of continuous demand will result, and will limit the application.