Feature: Roadway Topography

[lmz]

This pertains to network coding related to road grade & roadway topography.  Currently as you know, most MPOs and state regulatory agencies use the EPA MOVES model in conjunction with vehicle activity data from travel demand models to estimate transportation related emissions.  However, the methodology is unable to capture the effect of roadway topography on emission inventories.  There’s some research at Georgia Tech where they have developed a methodology that allows to account for road grade impacts in the analysis. The goal of their project is to evaluate the adequacy or inadequacy of current practices in evaluating the impacts of projects in light of the potential impacts of road grade, where road grade is obtained / extracted from the US Digital elevation model, and network links are segmented based on grade and number of lanes, amongst other elements.

Added from ActivitySim Budget Phase 9.xslx

[lmz]

Comments from previous discussion:

• Met Council: This seems more like a data issue- do networks incorporate topography? Is the data useful?

• PSRC- we calculate link uphill slope for our bike model, but not sure this is in ActivitySim's domain.

• SFCTA: This is a "supply side" question first

• MTC: Not a priority for us.