Faster Convergence of Integrated Activity-Based Models in Dynamic Multimodal Transit Assignment Using Macroscopic Road Congestion Estimation

This paper proposes an integrated framework of an activity-based behavior model and a multimodal transit assignment-simulation tool that captures road network congestion dynamics. The framework has two levels: the upper level is the demand-side activity-based model that decides individual travelers’ behavioral choices based on up-to-date information from the lower level; the lower level consists of both transit and road network estimation models on the supply side, whose inputs are trips from the upper level. The objective of this framework is to assess impacts of transit service policies, so the transit network is simulated with an agent-based multimodal hyperpath assignment model in each iteration, while the road network is mainly estimated by a macroscopic model of congestion (metamodel) instead of a simulation-based assignment model to accelerate execution time toward an equilibrated solution. Convergence under this framework is also defined from two aspects: individual choice behaviors and transit hyperpath assignment. One contribution of this paper is to incorporate the exogenous effects of road network dynamics into the integrated demand and transit assignment model, and to reduce the time to reach convergence with macroscopic modeling. This paper uses mode choice behavior as an example to demonstrate mathematical formulations and implementation procedures to reach two-level convergence. The framework is tested with the large-scale regional network of the Greater Chicago metropolitan area. The results suggest that the major advantage of the macroscopic road model is to accelerate convergence toward equilibrium when it is used to capture the traffic network congestion effects in this integrated mode choice-transit assignment framework.