Transport Modelling: Towards Operational Standards in Europe

Union was a challenging issue for the New EU Member States. Transport policy tools of these states needed to be developed and integrated within the European model tools, to ensure consistency and common understanding of strategic policy issues. Therefore, it was of crucial importance for developing common European transport models, to identify the immediate user needs and main bottlenecks on transport modelling in the New EU Member States. The new Member States have a particular interest to set up, enhance and/or link transport models at national and/or regional levels based on their needs.

The main achievement of MOTOS was a handbook which tried to give guidelines how to develop and to build transport models to support an effective and successful transport policy. These guidelines were based on common best practice principles, mostly coming from the old EU member countries.

Before making this handbook MOTOS had put considerable effort into determining user needs of model developers and policy makers. This user needs analyses were reinforced by targeted workshops in the New EU Member States. In continuation, the handbook identified and described best practices and common pitfalls in setting up, enhancing and linking national and regional transport models. Common best practice principles were defined for the most important processes identified in the user needs analysis. The handbook for transport modelling was also made available in an on-line navigable version.

The handbook contains three parts:

1. it provides a general description of the modelling process. Topics discussed include data collection, model estimation, uncertainties in models, linkage to other models and transport modelling software.
2. the handbook addresses modelling issues from the point of view of users, i.e. the policy-makers. The aim of is to describe for each issue the process followed by policy-makers who have identified a 'problem' and need a model to resolve it. These issues are then linked to modelling processes (passenger demand modelling, freight demand modelling, assignment models, economic models and/or impact models). A list of present models that can be used as a reference case is also presented, as well as a link to best practice examples.
3. an extensive description was made of the state-of-the-art of transport modelling and a number of best practice examples were collected and described.

The handbook can be used in two ways. Firstly, the hard copy of this handbo

Technical Implications

T1: The models used in NMS are ranging from macro-models (state and region level) through mezzo-models (agglomerations, towns, communities) to micro-models (town parts, crossroads). But, in general, there is focus on regional modelling, not for national. However there are national interests in transport modelling, especially in the Baltic States and modelling of the TEN-T development.

T2: Transport modelling as the professional tool for decision-making process is important and the participants of the workshops agreed that it should be promoted in many ways. It was indicated, that transport modelling becomes a higher importance where the public is involved, which forces the policy makers to make well-founding decisions and arguments.

T3: Uni-modal is the most common application of the transport modelling, but also multimodal models exist, at regional level (mainly regions and agglomerations). In all NMS the following multimodal models are used:

• private transport (cars) and public transport models (covering all modes of transport) with modal split;
• traffic models for forecasting modal flows (rail and road);
• network traffic models to assign traffic flows (road and rail) to the network elements.

T4: Transport models applications:

• The models in passenger transport, both car and public transport, are more often developed and used in practice, than freight models, followed by the user needs, expressed especially at regional and local level. The main focus is on modelling passenger transport demands and forecast of passenger traffic flows.
• As far as freight transport modelling is concerned, there are some differences between countries, namely: in Poland and in the Baltic States freight modelling is used for international corridors and distribution centres; in Hungary freight models are used quite rare; in Czech and Slovak Republics freight transport models are not used at national level. But Czech and Slovak Republics are very interested in freight transport modelling, especially forecasting freight traffic flows by modes of transport.
• Although all kinds of transport models were assessed as useful, passenger transport models are regarded as more useful as freight transport models.
• All countries, except for Malta & Cyprus pay a lot of attention to the economic impacts of transport.

T5: Types of models used in NMS:

• In general, there are two g
  

  Policy implications

  P1: Raise awareness for importance of good transport modelling:

  • Keep on promoting initiatives like MOTOS;
  • Specific fund is needed for translating whole handbook into Hungarian, Polish, Bulgarian, etc.

  P2: Regulation for data (legal framework):

  • Minimum requirements;
  • Public access.

  P3: Knowledge management:

  • Keep the website of MOTOS alive for more than one year;
  • Knowledge Education courses: real hand on experience with transport modelling;
  • Obligation to use existing guides/results like SPOTLIGHT;
  • Subsidising Annual Transport Modelling conference.

  P4: National centre for (regional) transport modelling in every country:

  • Coordination between these centres;
  • Education;
  • Standard methods for data collection.

  P5: EU Support for further development for TRANSTOOLS.

  P6: Stimulate/enforce international cooperation on corridors.

  Other results

  • To collect and analyse project related data on transport modelling in the Baltic States;
  • To organise workshops in Lithuania.