The New England Highway dissects the Maitland Local Government Area. It carries both local and through traffic. Maitland City Council had been lobbying the NSW State Government for either the upgrading of the New England Highway or the building of the ‘Southern Bypass’. Therefore Maitland City Council wanted to explore the traffic impacts of a ‘Southern Bypass’ around the most densely populated urban areas.
At that time, the State Government was planning for the Hunter Expressway. There were some differences in opinion about the impacts of the Hunter Expressway on the sections of the New England Highway which traverse through the urban areas of Maitland.
Our modelling showed that the traffic travelling on the Hunter Expressway was only a small component of the overall traffic on the New England Highway, and that a significant reduction would be achieved if the ‘Southern Bypass’ was built.
The NSW government is constructing the Hunter Express. Only time will tell who is correct in their modelling work.
The south west of Sydney is planned to accommodate the future urban development of a very large population, approximately the size of Canberra.
Over the years, Paul has modelled this development 6 times, each for different clients, but in every case the Sydney Strategic Travel Model was used, and always within the NSW offices. Many different land use scenarios and transport options have been tested. The NSW government is now building the rail line into the area.
All the modern software packages are so powerful that few modellers ever use every available feature in the software package. In fact, many modellers may not be aware of some of the advanced features which are available in their transport modelling software package.
Converting transport models from one software package to another is typically done when the transport modelling software is old and not regularly updated, or if some particular compelling feature is not available in the existing software package. The actual conversion work requires a more thorough understanding of the old and new software packages, as well as skills in converting data files from one format into another.
Transport Modelling has converted the following models:
Transport Modelling has used all the main-stream strategic transport modelling packages such as Emme, TRIPS and TRANPLAN now part of Citilab’s Cube suite of modelling programs, TRACKS is a transport modelling software package from New Zealand: TRAMS (Perth), TRANSCEND (Brisbane) and TRANSTEP (Canberra).
Over the years Paul has had personal contact with many of the developers of the SATURN, TranPlan, MVA’s TRIPS, Gabites Porter’s TRACKS, and INRO’s Emme and Dynameq software packages.
In every case, developers have been very keen to share the intimate detailed knowledge of the finer aspects of their software package. Often they were very happy to share the challenges faced as the software designer, as well as the issues of the model’s application to real life modelling tasks.
The NSW Government commissioned a study to determine the ‘book-ends’ (upper and lower bounds) in the future land use/transport planning scenario. Transport Modelling and David Kilsby teamed up for this work. The work was carried out within the government offices using the Sydney Strategic Travel Model.
Alternative land use scenarios, road transport infrastructure and public transport schemes were tested. This project took longer than 6 months because so many options were tested.
This study was to update the first study and tested the more likely scenarios in more detail. Transport Modelling and Kilsby Australia teamed up again and revisited the earlier modelling work. More conservative options for land use, and investments in road and rail infrastructure were tested. A new scenario was also investigated which suggested concentrating both population and employment growth in the Parramatta Road corridor and funding investment for transport improvements in this corridor.
In all, the second study included more than 25 model runs. All these runs were reported. More than 70 Key Performance Indicators were extracted from each run.
The two major modelling tasks developed:
Designed, developed and implemented the Wagga Wagga Traffic Model. This model jointly belongs to Wagga Wagga Council and RTA. Transport Modelling then used the model to analyse a potential median treatment on the Sturt Highway.
The median treatment would improve the flow on the highway which is particularly important for truck movement (significant in the rural areas), but the median treatment was also seen as restricting the north-south movements. Winners and losers were identified, both in quantum and geographical locations as well as cost benefit analyses undertaken.
The median treatment involved banning the right hand turning movements onto the Sturt Highway, which bisects the city of Wagga Wagga. This study divided the Sturt Highway into four sections throughout Wagga Wagga. Each section was analysed according to the expected time of implementation individually and as a whole to see what effect the closures would have on the traffic in the 2020, 2030 and 2040 networks.
This model is used to investigate the impacts of various settlement scenarios on the transport network for the region.
Transport Modelling has been contracted to do the demand modelling for infrastructure projects including the M2 and M5 Motorways and the F3 and F6 Freeways. This work was carried out with the existing models. The modelling software packages used included Emme, Cube and TRACKS.
In addition, Transport Modelling has developed special purpose corridor models to study the M5 and (Sydney) Eastern Distributor toll roads, as well as several tunnel projects.
Transport Modelling also assisted Brisbane City Council with their evaluation of the Strategic Transport Opportunities for Brisbane infrastructure projects. The study used the newly developed Brisbane Strategic Transport Model (BSTM).
Refer to Wagga Wagga Traffic Model.
A median treatment of the Sturt Highway through Wagga Wagga was studied to improve:
Plot 5: Dynameq can be used to indicate how accident rate could be reduced through fewer lane changes. This plot shows the Wagga Wagga median Treatment in front of the Base Hospital.
Medowie is a small community of 7,000 people, planned to grow to 15,000. The Medowie study explored options for the internal network with the aim of keeping the characteristics of the old township.
The Lochinvar study area is a greenfield. The planners were exploring the options for the staging of the land release program.
The traffic modelling was designed to assist the planners and engineers with resolving traffic related issues of the connections with the New England Highway which runs east-west through the area. Equally important was the issue of the internal north-south connections across the Highway.
Dynameq software was used to develop and build the micro-simulation model for the Parramatta CBD. This work is described in a paper: ‘Capturing Public Transport Benefits of Alleviated Road Congestion’ by David Kilsby & Paul van den Bos. This model was used to study the Charles St Opening which would effectively become a city centre bypass.
Plot 4: This image of the Parramatta network shows how the north-south movement can block the east-west movement. The red lines indicate queues.
In Sydney there are about nine regional Centres in which buses will have to take on a more prominent role because the roads accessing these centres have limited capacity, and one possibility is to give buses a higher priority entering these centres. The task was to develop a model to test the bus queue jump scheme.
The Macquarie Centre area was selected for its high bus movements. A bus queue jump was coded into the Dynameq network, and the benefits evaluated.
Testing six second queue jump for buses. The yellow lines show the transit only intersection movements. These are very easily coded into Dynameq.
The results showed:
Tallawarra Lands is the 535 hectare site adjunct to the Tallawarra power station in the Wollongong Local Government Area south of Sydney. The developers wanted to test options for both the internal traffic and traffic entering and exiting the site.
Transport Modelling developed a model that extended beyond the immediate site and included the surrounding road network, extensive enough for the Tallawarra traffic to disperse.
The network was cut out of the TRACKS software model that covered the Wollongong and Shellharbour Local Government Areas strategic network. It was found that the existing traffic conditions could be modelled well in Dynameq, but that the future traffic demand could not be accommodated on the future road network and this lead to some tension as the strategic modellers believed that their future networks were correct. Sometime later, Transport Modelling was working on another project for the NSW government that involved integrating that TRACKS strategic network into the Sydney Strategic Network. During that work, it was resolved that those future TRACKS networks lacked much needed capacity.
Maitland is a major in-land city centre in the Hunter Region. The Hunter River borders the CBD. Because the City centre has been in decline for some time, Maitland City Council approached a team of specialists to assist them with developing a plan to revitalise the CBD and hence its economy. Transport Modelling was part of this team and it was tasked to develop a model that could be used to explore a CBD Southern Bypass, test various options for the opening of the City Mall and test the planners’ version of a revitalised CBD.
The planners required a model that was sensitive enough to test
The modelling challenge of this study was the derivation of the travel demand matrix (trip tables). Because of the location’s geography (the Hunter River in the north and the New England Highway and the railway line in the South of the study area) there were only three locations where the external traffic could enter or leave the study area. When these traffic counts were analysed, it was possible to separate the through-flows from the localised flows. These flows were found to have different peaks. On reflection this made sense, the through-flow peak had to be earlier because their trip destinations were in employment centres in the surrounding areas.
The planners within the team were very impressed with the model’s capability and it was used extensively to derive a preferred outcome for a revitalised city. Council recently announced that the Mall will be opened.
Charlestown Shopping town is the largest shopping centre in the Local Government Areas of Newcastle and Lake Macquarie. Developers had prepared plans to double the capacity of Charlestown Shopping Town, and Lake Macquarie Council wished for all the developments to be integrated. The shopping complex is bounded by the intersection of the Pacific Highway and Charlestown Road. There are developments on both sides of the Pacific Highway.
The developers had created a very elaborate model of the proposed shopping complex in the Paramics software. Lake Macquarie Council approached Transport Modelling to develop a simple model to independently verify the modelled results from the developers.
The modelling challenge here was the Pacific Highway. It runs north-south through the developments. Given that this movement was the major planning consideration, Transport Planning considered the possible alternative paths for the traffic. This determined the rather larger than expected study area and included the Charlestown bypass which is not shown on the image above. When the various options for the Pacific Highway and the parallel paths were tested, it was found that the bigger study area proved necessary.
The Dynameq modelling showed encouraging results. Some of the future paths taken correlated to the concerns that existing residents had expressed about traffic increases in their local streets. Concerns were warranted especially when bus priority schemes were developed to encourage use of the planned bus interchange. These schemes would mean that some of the capacity from the Pacific Highway (due to bus priority lanes) would be taken out resulting in some traffic moving onto the bypass, and some other traffic would use rat runs through the local streets.
External auditors reviewed both the Paramics and Dynameq modelled results. They concluded that the results generated by the Dynameq software with its parallel paths produced more believable results than the Paramics model which had a very narrow study area.
The Dynameq model was used to develop the Charlestown Master Plan.
The NSW government has very ambitious public transport targets, and therefore it is important for even small models, to include a mode-choice module, even if it is a primitive one.
For the Wyong traffic models that Transport Modelling has developed, a primitive mode-choice module has been implemented. This is based on three components:
This model was used to determine the optimal split of car and public transport users into the Parramatta CBD.
Parramatta is the ‘second Sydney CBD’ in the Sydney metropolitan area. Transport Modelling built this model in conjunction with the Parramatta City Council. The Council owned the data and Transport Modelling owned the maths. Parramatta bought the Emme software license and Transport Modelling trained council staff to run this model in-house.
The model uses the incremental mode-choice outlined in Heinz Spiess' paper on Incremental Logit Demand Functions. The future auto demand was constrained by the available number of parking spaces in each of the zones. This model received good reviews by technical staff from the RMS.
Many in-house studies were undertaken using the model often assisted by Transport Modelling with the more technical aspects.
This was one of the first studies carried out using the multi-modal version of the Brisbane Strategic Travel Model (BSTM_mm). With the agreement of the BSTM_mm model developer, Paul modified the scripts to reflect the actual changes made to the public transport for this particular cluster of scenarios.
When the BSTM modellers wanted to implement a mode-choice component into their model, they investigated the mode-choice models used in the other Australian cities. They determined that the one used in the Perth model was the most suitable to be used for the Brisbane model. Two of the consultancies who were invited to do the work, independently suggested that the modellers approach Transport Modelling. Transport Modelling implemented the Perth model in two stages
The major challenge of this work revolved around the matrixes. When the Perth mode-choice modules and the BSTM macros were examined, it was immediately obvious that the existing BSTM matrixes were overwritten by the mode-choice calculations, and in the next loop strange results appeared. This issue was resolved by ensuring that the matrixes were not overwritten.
The Emme script and MS Excel workbook developed for this work are still used in running the BSTM to this day.
When Paul’s colleague approached him with some assistance on determining the potential mode-shift to bicycle and walk modes for a certain part of Sydney, Paul considered the ‘short’ car trips for the different travel purposes.
These numbers were plotted and used as a starting point for the planning process.
The Bureau of Transport Statistics (formally TDC) is the custodian of the Sydney Strategic Model (STM). Transport Modelling has been privileged to have worked with the STM even prior to the Emme Modelling Panels being established. For this widespread study the Sydney bus system was partitioned into Contract Regions (amalgamating private bus operations into larger areas). The aim of the modelling that Transport Modelling carried out was to enable a smooth transition to implementation stage by ensuring that:
The STM was used to model approximate existing operator services and the proposed areas of operations. The modelling involved extracting data for each bus operator, and as the proposed areas changed, new statistics had to be regenerated.
For each region, many bus route/frequency policy options were trialled including:
The Bureau of Transport Statistics (formally TDC) is the custodian of the Sydney Strategic Model (STM). Transport Modelling has been privileged to have worked with the STM even prior to the Emme Modelling Panels being established.
This study was undertaken for another consultancy on behalf of the Bureau of Transport Statistics. Travel demand estimates for Bus, Rail, Light-Rail options were tested for the future land release in the South West of Sydney. The extended modelling was done by Transport Modelling. The study was completed in three stages: preliminary forecasts, comprehensive analyses, and sensitivity analyses on the preferred options.
Plot 3: Future rail options studied for Bringelly
Plot 5: Testing a bus express route.
Nix was a project manager and a lead modeller of an international team (Australians and Canadians) of experts to perform an advisory role in guidance and support TMR to develop a plan to undertake a commercial goods and services travel survey. This survey once complete will inform the commercial component of the BNE model. This undertaking is first time implemented in Australia.
Transport Modelling enhanced the Wagga Wagga Traffic Model with the heavy vehicle matrix, and then used the enhanced model to study the proposed Bomen Industrial Estate.
The study examined the access to and from the Bomen Industrial Estate, as well as the impacts on intersections throughout the City of Wagga Wagga. The outcome of the study was that the NSW Department of Planning approved the development of the Bomen Industrial Estate.
Sydney Intermodal Terminal Alliance (SIMTA) is proposing to build a freight intermodal at Moorebank. Transport Modelling reviewed the publically available documentation and found that the modelled numbers were vastly different from our expected numbers.
Transport Modelling have presented their finding to the NSW government and these findings were well received, and much appreciated.
Transport Modelling was asked to assist with the enhancing of the future freight demand for an Australian Capital City.
This work involved the manipulation of the freight demand matrix in a manner to reflect the differential growth and growth capacities of the existing and future freight centres in the city, as well as incorporating the distances between the centres. In addition the future growth at the screen lines was also used in the matrix estimation. This results in a very complex demand adjustment exercise.
The work was incorporated into the city’s strategic model.
This study was undertaken for the Australia Greenhouse Office, and was carried out by the CSIRO, Kilsby Australia and the University of South Australia.
Transport Modelling supported Kilsby Australia by undertaking all the Sydney Strategic Travel Model (STM) runs for this study. The modelling required the multi-class assignment process and extracting all the traffic flow details for the passenger vehicle and each of the commercial vehicle classes. The modelled outputs were post-processed for greenhouse gas emissions at the University of South Australia.
A significant component of the work involved translating policy measures into scenarios which could be modelled in a meaningful way. This required the full understanding and limitations of the STM. The Policy instruments included infrastructure and land use measures, vehicle movement measures and vehicle measures.
The study showed objectively that that policy instruments such as:
reduce VHT, trip length as well as emissions. It is stated in the report that this is contrary to industry trends towards lower load factors and ‘just in time’ deliveries, which are likely to increase emissions.
This newly developed method of assessing greenhouse gases was expected to be generally applicable to all Australian cities and potentially applicable to cities elsewhere. Refer to the paper ‘Assessing Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Abatement Measures on Urban Freight'.This paper and its variations were published many times in different forums.
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