Evaluating developments of regional impact using TRANSIMS

The thesis develops and documents a workflow for applying TRANSIMS to the analysis of Developments of Regional Impact (DRI). The proposed workflow will consider perspectives of both the transportation agency responsible for the evaluating the DRI and the transportation engineer responsible for perfo...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Shealey, Stephanie Lynne
Published: Georgia Institute of Technology 2010
Subjects:
DRI
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1853/33888
Description
Summary:The thesis develops and documents a workflow for applying TRANSIMS to the analysis of Developments of Regional Impact (DRI). The proposed workflow will consider perspectives of both the transportation agency responsible for the evaluating the DRI and the transportation engineer responsible for performing the analysis. TRANSIMS offers a comprehensive framework for managing inputs and outputs that follow a transportation planning workflow. Not a single, monolithic software application, TRANSIMS is a suite of 65 small, light-weight, single-task tools for creating and manipulating GIS shape files and SQL data base files, estimating the elements of a four-step transportation modeling process, and computing link and vehicle delays for a given transportation network. Current analysis techniques for developments of regional impact require that the analyst apply arbitrary or non-repeatible estimates for trip assignments at the regional level. Because of the modular nature of the TRANSIMS, implementing each DRI as a layer in the GIS data base will permit the mixing and matching of multiple DRI within a local area, permitting a risk-based approach to the evaluation of multiple DRI, any of which may or may not actually happen. This thesis focuses exclusively on the review of DRI analysis techniques, review of TRANSIMS modules, and development of a proposed DRI workflow within the TRANSIMS framework.