Abstract Manager

Passenger demand models are used to understand the movement of people across the multimodal transportation system. People’s journeys between their origin and destination usually includes one or combination of the modes ranging between car, bus, train, ferry, etc., and often include other access modes such as walking, biking or taxis in some cases. Furthermore, long distance passenger travel includes trips across multiple jurisdictions having their own fare structure that needs to be considered.

There are several passenger demand models that are used to simulate the movement of people, across the different permutations of routes and modes than can be selected between an origin and destination. However, these traditional models are often complex and require substantial amount of data for their development, validation, and calibration. Consequently, this complexity contributes to increased project costs and extended timelines.

This study presents a simplified approach towards modeling passenger flows across a regional transportation network, focused on ferry transport. The model considers travel times, intermodal transfer times, boarding and alighting times, and the corresponding fares associated with the movement of passengers. These costs and times are categorized by passenger type and are represented as a link- or node-based generalized cost. The generalized cost function build-up also accounts for bottlenecks, inefficiencies, congestion, boarding issues, and delays, etc.

The feature of the model is that it uses a combined mode choice and route assignment approach to effectively capture the multimodal nature of passenger flows. The methodology uses a path enumeration algorithm at first to find the best possible multimodal routes between a given origin and destination for a given passenger type. The generalized transportation costs are calculated for each alternate route identified by the model. A nested logit model is used to find the probabilities based on the generalized cost. Finally, a simple traffic assignment model assigns the passenger flows to the ferry network.

The model has been developed in collaboration with BC Ferries to understand demand on the ferry network and to test shifts in demand with potential new ferry routes. Future applications include exploring the impact of demographic and employment shifts on the route network, modeling future capacity needs, and understanding the potential effects of mode shift policies, providing a robust framework for strategic transportation planning.