There is an increasing need to have flexible data available to meet the requirements resulting from rapidly changing land-use patterns. Trip desires, expressed in zone-to-zone movements and assignments to basic street networks, dictate the needed improvements. A series of tests have been conducted to analyse and verify the use of synthetic travel patterns developed on the basis of land-use patterns and measures of vehicle ownership, population, employment, relative economic level, recreation, etc. These tests clearly indicate that synthesising of travel desires is a valid as well as economical approach the metropolitan area traffic planning. The synthesis in most cases is based on interactance curves developed from origin-destination data in the same city where the tests were applied. This suggests a logical next step-the application of synthetic travel patterns obtained in one urban area to the prediction of travel in a second urban area. Such analyses will be extremely desirable in developing community transportation plans.
Abstract