Iterated transportation simulations for Dallas and Portland

The goal of the TRansportation ANalysis and SIMulation System (TRANSIMS) is to combine the most important aspects of human decision-making related to transportation, from activities planning (sleep, work, eat, shop,...) via modal and route planning to driving, into a single, consistent methodological and software framework. This is meant to combine the functionalities of activities-based travel demand generation, modal choice and route assignment, and micro-simulation. TRANSIMS attempts to employ advanced methodologies in all these modules. Yet, it is probably the overall framework that is the most important part of this attempt. It is, for example, possible to replace the TRANSIMS microsimulation by another micro-simulation that uses the same input and generates the same output. TRANSIMS uses specific regions as examples in order to ensure that the technology is rooted in the real world. Until about the middle of 1997, an approximately five miles by five miles area in Dallas/Texas was used. Since then, TRANSIMS has moved to using data from Portland/Oregon; a case study for this region is planned to be completed by the end of the year 2000. In this paper the authors give short descriptions of these projects and give references to related publications