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WELCOME TO THE MARYLAND STATEWIDE TRANSPORTATION MODEL (MSTM) WIKI

This wiki site is an "unofficial" site designed to facilitate and promote collaboration, research and public outreach of the Maryland Statewide Transportation Model. This site is not funded by the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA), and comments and discussion do not necessarily reflect those of SHA or the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT).

Overview

It is estimated that Maryland's population will grow by approximately 1.1 million by year 2040. Employment is also growing, and during this same timeframe it is expected that approximately 0.4 million jobs will be added. State agencies such as the Maryland Department of Transportation and the Maryland Department of Planning are proactively working to accomodate this growth in the most efficient manner, whil minimizing the strain on the transportation system. After Several years of developmetn, calibration and validation, the Maryland Statewide Transportation Model (MSTM) has been integrated into many SHA's policies, programs, and projects (providing an analytical framework to inform decision makers). MSTM is a multi-layer travel demand model working at national, statewide and urban levels to forecast and analyze key measures of transportation system performance

MSTM provides comprehensive demand modeling & forecasting capabilities in and around Maryland for:

• corridor status
• freight movement
• transportation/land use charges
• impacts of external factors and policies
• long-range plan and project prioritization
• transportation system performance measurement
• scenario analysis
• support for MPOs and local initiatives

The model privides an analytic framework that can facilitate Maryland's policies and address the State's transportation challeneges.

As Maryland continues to grow, providing a high quality, reliable transportation system will be vital. Careful Planning and data driven processes are critical in order to ensure safety, mobility, and multi-modal choices for the movement of people and goods. The Maryland Statewide Transportation Model (MSTM) provides the analytical framework that can facilitate Maryland policies and transportation challenges.

Background

The Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) has developed a statewide transportation model that (1) will allow consistent and defensible estimates of how different patterns of future development change key measures of transportation performance, and (2) can contribute to discussion and other evaluation tools that address how future transportation improvements may affect development patterns.

The Maryland Statewide Travel Model (MSTM) is by design a multi-layer model working at a Regional, Statewide and Urban level (Figure 1-1). The Regional Model covers North America, the Statewide Model includes Maryland, Washington DC, Delaware and selected areas in Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia, and the Urban Model which serves to link for comparison purposes only, the urban travel models where they exist within the statewide model study area, for instance by connecting MSTM with the Baltimore Metropolitan Council (BMC) Model or the Metro Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG) Model.

This documentation is a User’s Guide focusing on the implementation of the Regional and the Statewide Model components. Past and future efforts strive to compare MSTM model results to MPO models and data at the Urban level. Every level is simulated to study travel behavior at an appropriate level of detail. The interaction of the three levels potentially improves every level by providing simulation results between upper and lower levels. All MSTM assignment of the travel demand occurs at the Statewide level.

At the Statewide Level, there are The 1588 Statewide Model level Zones (SMZs) that cover Maryland, Delaware, Washington DC, and parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia (Figure 1-2). The 151 Regional Model Zones (RMZs) cover the full US, Canada, and Mexico. RMZs are used for the multi-state commodity flow model and the long distance passenger model only and are eventually translated into flows assigned to networks and zones at the Maryland-focused (SMZ) level.

Model Steps

Trip Generation

Non-Motorized Trips

The Maryland Statewide Transportation Model (MSTM) generates motorized trips only. Walk and bike trips are generated by trip generation, but shall not be included in trip tables for subsequent modules. A certain share of trips is dropped before trip productions and attractions are fed into the destination choice model. Previously, the MSTM model applied Weibull functions to estimate the non-motorized shares by area type and purpose. Plotting these shares showed unexpected patterns, which affect trip origins, mode choice and the assignment results. To mitigate the impact, non-motorized shares were averaged across counties. This resulted into reasonable patterns non-motorized shares, however, the was a steep border effect were two neighboring zones in different counties may have very different non-motorized shares, while all zones within one counties were treated as being equal in terms of non-motorized shares.

In this phase, the 2007 Household Travel Survey was used to estimate the non-motorized share by zone. A multiple regression was set up to analyze the impact of various measures of densities and accessibilities on non-motorized shares at the zonal level.