Case Study:

Sacramento, California

Conclusions

Future Refinements

• It is possible to develop an integrated travel demand model with finer geographic detail into the MEPLAN framework; however, its development may be time consuming due to the difficulties of calibrating such a model. Recent advances in calibration methods may address this problem and reduce the time and monetary cost of model development (Abraham and Hunt, 2000). In addition, land use models can be developed for use with typical regional travel demand models. In many regions in the U.S., however, travel demand models would need to be significantly improved to better represent travel time and cost throughout the model hierarchy.

• There is currently no "goods movement" flow in the Sacramento version of MEPLAN, due to a lack of local data. The model has been designed to include this at a later date, however. Inclusion of freight flows would improve the accuracy of the model's firm-location choice and would allow transportation conditions for freight to be investigated separately from conditions for passenger travel.

• In future research, the study authors plan to control for the travel model in MEPLAN and thus better isolate the contribution of the land use component of the model.

• UrbanSim, developed in the U.S. and applied in the Honolulu, Portland, and Salt Lake City metropolitan areas, provides a number of advances in the state-of-the-practice in urban transportation-land use modeling. These include, for example, disaggregation of the location choice to the level of traffic analysis zones; integration with existing four-step travel models; and the option for parcel-level microsimulation of land development and redevelopment. UrbanSim allows explicit input of public sector choices as policy scenarios, and further expands the set of land use policies that can be tested.

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