EXPEDITE - Expert System based Predictions of Demand for Internal Transport in Europe
Overview
Background & policy context:
A more efficient, safe and environmentally friendly use of available infrastructures requires an appropriate management of traffic flows. The three main aims in this respect are:
- to contribute to the development, integration and validation of advanced traffic management systems, including the exchange between and the use of information systems;
- to establish a coherent, integrated transport management systems architecture across the transport chain;
- to fine tune demand management tools and policies and facilitate their deployment.
The EXPEDITE project addressed the last one, which is the third RTD objective “2.3 Modal and Intermodal Transport Management Systems” of the KA2 “Sustainable Mobility and Intermodality” of the 5th Framework Programme
Objectives:
The objectives of the EXPEDITE project were:
- producing multi-modal demand forecasts up to 2020 for passengers and freight transport for Europe (using the NUTS2 zoning system for Europe, with about 250 zones in the study area, comprising the current member states and accession countries);
- identifying market segments which react most to control measures;
- formulating efficient policy bundles to achieve mode-switching in line with Common Transport Policy (CTP) objectives (this means substitution away from car and air transport for passengers and away from road transport in freight).
This project was closely linked to the THINK-UP thematic network, which was set up to describe the state-of-the-art methodologies in forecasting and to improve the mutual understanding of the results obtained.
Methodology:
The methodology which has been developed to deliver forecasts in EXPEDITE for transport demand, in Europe at the zonal level, is as follows.
1) Description of the planned interaction with THINK-UP, the thematic network that was set up to describe the state-of-the-art methodologies in transport forecasting and to improve the mutual understanding of the results obtained.
2) Review of existing national and international transport models. The EXPEDITE forecasts exploit existing international and national transport models.
3) Presentation of the base-year (1995) data;
4) Definition of a Reference Scenario for 2020 and the intermediate years and defined policies to be simulated;
5) Execution of runs with existing models: the SCENES European model and a number of national models for passenger and freight transport. For predictions focussing on long distance, inter-zonal transport EXPEDITE uses outcomes of runs with one or more European transport models, in particular new runs with the SCENES European model.
6) Creation, on the basis of the information of the above-mentioned runs, of two new models, the EXPEDITE meta-model for passenger transport and the EXPEDITE meta-model for freight transport. The EXPEDITE meta-model for freight is based on runs with four national freight transport models available within EXPEDITE, runs with the SCENES model, and runs with the NEAC model. For forecasts focussing on passenger transport with trip distances up to 160 km, EXPEDITE has developed the EXPEDITE meta-model for passenger transport, based on the outcomes of runs with five national passenger transport models, taken to represent behaviour of travellers. In EXPEDITE the results of these runs of the underlying models are transferred to other zones in Europe, corrected for specific factors such as may arise from specific geographical differences. Results of the meta-model for a specific zone are obtained by scaling results for a prototypical area to match known totals (e.g. from transport statistics, sector statistics, etc). For a large number of segments within a zone, the meta-model produces a levels matrix (distribution of tours and passenger-kilometres by mode and distance class) and switching matrices for different policy measures. For each zone, expansion factors were calculated depending on the importance of the segments in the zone (many of these weights could be zero for a specific zone). Within any of the five existing national passeng
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