Exploring the Influence of New Bicycle Facilities on Commuting Mode Choice by Agent Based Modeling

A common reason to build bicycle facilities is to mitigate vehicle congestion,reduce vehicle emissions and promote physical activity by increasing the share oftrips made by bicycle. Surprisingly, the previous study in Albuquerque(Rowangould and Tayarani, 2014) which, asked cyclists who currently usebicycle facilities, found that almost seventy percent would continue to bike if thefacilities had not been provided and the rest would travel by alternative means,mainly by driving a car. However, that study does not able to answer what wouldbe the bicycle mode share if there would be more bicycle facilities in the city.Answer to this question is mostly important because previous studies show thatAlbuquerque commuters do not follow the common commuting pattern. (Laststudy claim that cyclists do not depend on bicycle facilities).This study would examine commuters’-who currently use their car- behavior andtheir mode choice by using an agent-based simulation models if they have achance to choose bicycle mode for their commuting trips. The proposed modelneeds users’ characteristics such as utility data for different transportation modes,and transportation network and its characteristics such as travel time in thenetwork. In the first step, origin-destination (O-D) matrix -Travel Demand Modelinput that is an output of distribution model which is used for mode choice andtraffic assignment- would be used to model a sample network with few links, tosetup the simulation model, because this the first time that this model will beimplemented. Therefore, the agent would have a chance to choose bicycle for hertrip, and we will see if she would choose it or not.Since the ABQ travel demand model does not able to model bicycle mode, theseresults would help decision makers to evaluate the efficiency of investing on newbicycle facilities in terms of increasing bicycle mode share, and find out whatscenarios can reduce the greenhouse gas emission in Albuquerque.

کلیدواژه ها:

Bicycle Facilities ، Agent Based Modeling ، NetLogo