Urban Transportation Planning

Zones, Nodes and Links

 Why is the car of the worst mode of
transportation in a dense urban city?
 Network and Zoning Systems
• One of the most important early choices facing
the transport modeller is that of the level of
detail (resolution) to be adopted in a study.
• This problem has many dimensions: it refers to
the schemes to be tested, the type of behavioural
variables to be included, the treatment of time,
and so on. This section concentrates on design
guidelines for two of these choices: zoning
system and network definition.
• We shall see that in these two cases, as in other key
elements of transport modelling, the final choices
reflect a compromise between two conflicting
objectives: accuracy and cost.
• In principle greater accuracy could be achieved by
using a more detailed zoning and network system; in
the limit, this would imply recognising each individual
household, its location, distance to access points to the
network, and so on. With a large enough sample (100%
rate over several days) the representation of the
current system could be made very accurate indeed.
• However, the problem of stability over time
weakens this vision of accuracy as one would
need to forecast, at the same level of detail,
changes at the individual household level that
would affect transport demand.
• This is a very difficult and mostly unnecessary
task. Lesser levels of detail therefore, are not only
warranted on the grounds of economy but also
on those of accuracy whenever forecasting is
involved
 Zoning Design
• A zoning system is used to aggregate the individual
households and premises into manageable chunks for
modelling purposes. The main two dimensions of a zoning
system are the number of zones and their size.
• The two are, of course, related. The greater the number of
zones, the smaller they can be to cover the same study area.
• It has been common practice in the past to develop a zoning
system specifically for each study and decision-making
context. This is obviously wasteful if one performs several
studies in related areas; moreover, the introduction of
different zoning systems makes it difficult to use data from
previous studies and to make comparisons of modelling
results over time.
• The first choice in establishing a zoning system is to distinguish the study
area itself from the rest of the world. Some ideas may help in making this
choice:
• In choosing the study area one must consider the decision-making
context, the schemes to be modelled, and the nature of the trips of
interest: mandatory, optional, long or short distance, and so on.
• For strategic studies one would like to define the study area so that the
majority of the trips have their origin and destination inside it; however,
this may not be possible for the analysis of transport problems in smaller
urban areas where the majority of the trips of interest are through-trips
and a bypass is to be considered.
• Similar problems arise with traffic management studies in local areas
where again, most of the trips will have their origin, destination or both,
clearly outside the area of interest. What matters in these cases is
whether it is possible to model changes to these trips arising as a result of
new schemes.
• The study area should be somewhat bigger than the specific area of
interest covering the schemes to be considered. Opportunities for re-
routeing, changes in destination and so on, must be allowed for; we
would like to model their effects as part of the study area itself.
• The region external to the study area is normally
divided into a number of external zones. In some cases
it might be enough to consider each external zone to
represent ‘the rest of the world’ in a particular
direction; the boundaries of these different slices of
the rest of the world could represent the natural
catchment areas of the transport links feeding into the
study area.
• In other cases, it may be advantageous to consider
external zones of increasing size with the distance to
the study area. This may help in the assessment of the
impacts over different types of travellers (e.g. long- and
short-distance).
• The study area itself is also divided into smaller internal
zones. Their number will depend on a compromise between
a series of criteria discussed below.
• For example, the analysis of traffic management schemes
will generally call for smaller zones, often representing
even car parks or major generators/attractors of trips.
• Strategic studies, on the other hand, will often be carried
out on the basis of much larger zones.
• For example, strategic studies of London have been
undertaken using fine zoning systems of about 1000 zones
(for about 7.2 million inhabitants) and several levels of
aggregation of them down to about 50 zones (at borough
level).
• As can be seen, there is a wide variety of
models and number of zones per million
inhabitants. These vary depending on the
nature of the model (tactical and short term
planning, strategic and long term), the
resources available and the particular focus or
set of problems addressed.
• Note also that sometimes a more aggregated
zoning system is used for part of the model
system, for example trip generation and
distribution
• Then, a finer zoning system is often used for
mode choice and assignment: these are often
referred to as Traffic Analysis Zones or TAZs.
• Zones are represented in the computer models as if all
their attributes and properties were concentrated in a
single point called the zone centroid.
• This notional spot is best thought of as floating in
space and not physically on any location on a map.
• Centroids are attached to the network through
centroid connectors representing the average costs
(time, distance) of joining the transport system for
trips with origin or destination in that zone.
• Nearly as important as the cost associated with
each centroid connector is the node in the
network it connects to. These should be close to
natural access/egress points for the zone itself.
• Locating centroids automatically at the center of
gravity of each zone and measuring their distance
to key nodes to produce centroid connectors is a
quick fix valid only for the simplest ‘first cut’
network runs.
• Centroids and centroid connectors play a key role
in the quality of the rest of the models, but their
definition and coding does not follow a strict and
objective approach; they rely a good deal on the
experience of the modeller.
• The centroid connector influences the route
followed to load trips onto both the road and
public transport networks and therefore affects
the total cost of travelling from Origin to
Destination and all the models that include them.
 Compilation of Zoning Criteria from
Experiences in Several Practical Studies
• Zoning size must be such that the aggregation error caused by the
assumption that all activities are concentrated at the centroid is not
too large. It might be convenient to start postulating a system with
many small zones, as this may be aggregated in various ways later
depending on the nature of the projects to be evaluated.
• The zoning system must be compatible with other administrative
divisions, particularly with census zones; this is probably the
fundamental criterion and the rest should only be followed if they
do not lead to inconsistencies with it.
• Zones should be as homogeneous as possible in their land use
and/or population composition; census zones with clear differences
in this respect (i.e. residential sectors with vastly different income
levels) should not be aggregated, even if they are very small.
• Zone boundaries must be compatible with cordons and
screen lines and with those of previous zoning systems.
However, it has been found in practice that the use of main
roads as zone boundaries should be avoided, because this
increases considerably the difficulty of assigning trips to
zones, when these originate or end at the boundary
between two or more zones.
• The shape of the zones should allow an easy determination
of their centroid connectors; this is particularly important
for later estimation of intra-zonal characteristics. A zone
should represent the natural catchment area of the
transport networks and its centroid connector(s) identified
so as to represent the average costs to access them.
• Zones do not have to be of equal size; if anything, they
could be of similar dimensions in travel time units, therefore
generating smaller zones in congested than in uncongested
areas.
• It is advantageous to develop a hierarchical
zoning system, as in the London Transportation
Studies, where subzones are aggregated into
zones which in turn are combined into districts,
traffic boroughs and finally sectors. This facilitates
the analysis of different types of decisions at the
appropriate level of detail. Hierarchical zoning
systems benefit from an appropriate zone-
numbering scheme where the first digit indicates
the broad area, the first two the traffic borough,
the first three the district, and so on.
 Network Representation
• The transportation network is deemed to represent a
key component of the supply side of the modelling
effort, i.e. what the transport system offers to satisfy
the movement needs of trip makers in the study area.
• The description of a transport network in a computer
model can be undertaken at different levels of detail
and requires the specification of its structure, its
properties or attributes and the relationship between
those properties and traffic flows. For an early general
review of network representation issues, see Lamb and
Havers (1970).
 Network Details
• The transport network may be represented at different
levels of aggregation in a model.
• At one extreme one has models with no specific links
at all; they are based on continuous representations of
transport supply (Smeed 1968). These models may
provide, for example, a continuous equation of the
average traffic capacity per unit of area instead of
discrete elements or links. At a slightly higher level of
disaggregation one can consider individual roads but
include speed-flow properties taken over a much larger
area; see for example Wardrop (1968).
• Normal practice, however, is to model the network
as a directed graph, i.e. a system of nodes and links
joining them (see Larson and Odoni 1981), where
most nodes are taken to represent junctions and
the links stand for homogeneous stretches of road
between junctions.
• Links are characterised by several attributes such
as length, speed, number of lanes and so on, and
are normally unidirectional; even if during input a
single two-way link is specified for simplicity, it will
be converted into two one-way links in the internal
computer representation of the network.
• A subset of the nodes is associated with zone centroids,
and a subset of the links to centroid connectors.
Currently, the principal source of network data would be
one of the many digital maps available for most cities.
One should not assume, however, that they are error
free. They will need checking, updating, pruning (to
focus on the network of interest) and complementing
with observations on items like on-street parking,
pedestrian friction, bus lanes and other features that
may affect their performance.
• A problem with this scheme is that ‘at-node’ connectivity
is offered to each link joining it at no cost. In practice,
some turning movements at junctions may be much
more difficult to perform than others; indeed, some
turning movements may not be allowed at all.
• In order to represent these features of real road
networks better, it is possible to penalise and/or ban
some turning movements. This can be done manually
by expanding the junction providing separate
(sometimes called dummy) links for each turning
movement and associating a different cost to each.
• Alternatively, some commercial computer programs
are capable of performing this expansion in a semi-
automatic way, following simple instructions from the
user about difficult or banned movements.
• The level of disaggregation can be increased
further when detailed traffic simulation
models are used. In these cases additional
links are used at complex junctions to account
for the performance of reserved lanes, give-
way lines, and so on.
• Sometimes networks are subsets of larger
systems; they may be cordoned off from them
thus defining access or cordon points where
the network of interest is connected to the
rest of the world.
• These points are sometimes called ‘gateways’
and dummy links may be used to connect
them to external zones.
• A key decision in setting up a network is how many levels to include
in the road hierarchy.
• If more roads are included, the representation of reality should be
better; however, there is again a problem of economy versus
realism which forces the modeller to select some links for exclusion.
• Moreover, it does not make much sense to include a large number
of roads in the network and then make coarse assumptions about
turning movements and delays at junctions.
• It is not sensible either to use a very detailed network with a coarse
zoning system as then spatial aggregation errors (i.e. in terms of
centroid connections to the network) will reduce the value of the
modelling process.
• What matters is to make route choice and flows as realistic as
possible within the limitations of the study.
• Jansen and Bovy (1982) investigated the
influence of network definition and detail over
road assignment accuracy. Their conclusion
was that the largest errors were obtained at
the lower levels in the hierarchy of roads.
• Therefore, one should include in the network
at least one level below the links of interest:
for example, in a study of A (trunk) roads one
should also include B (secondary) roads.
• In the case of public-transport networks an additional level
of detail is required. The modeller must specify the
network structure corresponding to the services offered.
These will be coded as a sequence of nodes visited by the
service (bus, rail), normally with each node representing a
suitable stop or station.
• Junctions without bus stops can, therefore, be excluded
from the public-transport network.
• Two types of extra links are often added to public-transport
networks. These are walk links, representing the parts of a
journey using public transport made on foot, and links to
model the additional costs associated with transferring
from one service (or mode) to another.
 Link Properties
• The level of detail provided about the attributes of
links depends on the general resolution of the
network and on the type of model used. At the
very minimum the data for each link should
include its length, its travel speeds (either free-
flow speeds or an observed value for a given flow
level) and the capacity of the link, usually in
passenger car equivalent units (pcu) per hour.
• In addition to this a cost-flow relationship is
associated with each link as discussed below. In
some cases, more elaborate models are used to
relate delay to traffic flow, but these require
additional information about links.
 Link Properties
• Type of road (e.g. expressway, trunk road, local street).
• Road width or number of lanes, or both.
• An indication of the presence or otherwise of bus lanes,
or prohibitions of use by certain vehicles (e.g. lorries).
• Banned turns, or turns to be undertaken only when
suitable gaps in the opposing traffic become available,
and so on.
• Type of junction and junction details including signal
timings.
• Storage capacity for queues and their presence at the
start of a modelling period.
• Some research results have identified other attributes of
routes as important to drivers, for example tolls,
signposting and fuel consumption (see for example Outram
and Thompson 1978 and Wootton et al. 1981).
• Work in the Netherlands has shown that (weighted) time
and distance explains only about 70% of the routes actually
chosen. The category of the road (motorway, A road, B
road), the predictability of the time taken, scenic quality,
traffic signals and capacity help to explain additional routes.
• As our understanding of how these attributes influence
route choice improves, we will be able to develop more
accurate assignment models. The counterpart of this
improvement will be the need to include other features of
roads, like their scenic quality, gradient, and so on.
 Network Costs
• Most current assignment techniques assume that
drivers seek to minimise a linear combination of time,
distance (associated to fuel costs) and tolls (if any),
sometimes referred to as generalised cost for route
choice.
• This is known to be a simplifying assumption as there
may be differences not only in the perception of time,
but also about its relative importance compared with
other route features. However, the majority of network
models in use today deal only with travel time,
distance and tolls.
• When modelling travel time as a function of flow one
must distinguish two different cases.
• The first case is when the assumption can be made
that delay on a link depends only on the flow on the
link itself; this is typical of long links away from
junctions and therefore it has been used in most inter-
urban assignment models so far. The second case is
encountered in urban areas where the delay on a link
depends in an important way on flows on other links,
for example for non-priority traffic at a give-way or
roundabout junction.
• The introduction of very general flow-delay
formulations is not difficult until one faces the
next issue, equilibration of demand and supply.
• There, the mathematical treatment of the first
case (often called the separable cost function
case) is simpler than the second; however, there
are now techniques for balancing demand and
supply in the case of link-delay models depending
on flows on several links, i.e. When the effect of
each link flow cannot be separated.
 Public Transport Networks
• Public Transport networks are more complex than road networks.
They require an identification of the route taken by each service as
a unique sequence of links. It is also necessary to identify the
locations where stops are possible and also those where
interchange with other services is permissible.
• The frequency of the service and in some cases the actual timetable
and the fare, must also be specified and included in the network
description.
• Access to stops may be on foot or by another mode and this can be
represented by centroid connectors in the simpler models and by
one or more auxiliary networks of access modes in more realistic
undertakings. This is why the centroid connectors for public
transport are always different from those used for the road
network.
• The public transport network could be entirely
independent of the road network as in the
case of most rail and metro services;
• Alternatively, the speed of the service may be
affected by road traffic as in the case of buses
and on-street running of trams, even when
priority measures to support them help to
reduce the impact of road congestion.
• In addition to the effect of road congestion, it
is sometimes necessary to account for the
issue of passenger congestion: crowding on
buses and trains leading to discomfort and
even having to miss a service because it was
full and impossible to board.