TRAVEL DEMAND MODELING FOR DELHI USING VISUM

Abstract

Increasing urbanization, population growth and rising incomes have led to rapid growth of travel demand in Indian cities. Because of resource constraints the cities are unable to meet these travel demands. The pattern of increased travel demand has also changed with the time, depending up on the changing distribution of population and economic activities across the region. Delhi is the world's most populous city with a high growth rate of nearly four percent a year. The future of New Delhi is in question; as the capital city is immersed in pollution, congestion by private as well as public transport vehicles and an everyday increase of private vehicle population. A fast growing population, urban sprawl, one of the largest road networks (2,103 kmIl00km sq) and the third highest per capita income level in India, have translated into high levels of demand for motor vehicles. Public transport faces an uphill struggle to compete with private vehicles to cater to the rising travel demand. The travel demand will rise from 4 million trips per day in 1994 to 20 million trips per day by 2011, in which the road based transport need to fulfil 12 million trips. So it is required to develop a Travel Demand Model to know the future demand of various modes of transportation in Delhi. Travel demand modelling (TDM) aims to establish the spatial distribution of travel explicitly by means of an appropriate system of zones. Usually Travel Demand Modelling is performed for a single region. To perform the same for multi regions one has to follow different methodology because of the larger area, non homogenous and having more severity in it development. It is humanly impossible to keep track on the entire player in a system and their interaction and interrelation. This challenging task can be easily handled using macro simulators like VISUM, TransCAD, CUBE etc which have all the geographical and mathematical modules, analysis features to model the Travel demand of a region.