Northern urban development corridor integrating level of modeling

Abstract

Paper presented at the 30th Annual Southern African Transport Conference 11-14 July 2011 "Africa on the Move", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.The Northern Urban Development Corridor Study address the long term planning for the area consisting of Phoenix, Verulam and Tongaat where the new King Shaka International Airport is situated up to the year 2030 taking into account the provision of engineering services such as transportation, electricity, water supply and sewerage. This paper focuses on the improvement of the existing eThekwini Transport Demand Model and how th~sm odel was adjusted to be able to benefit from an integrated macro, rneso and micro level modeling. The existing eThekwini Transport Demand Model (developed in EMME) was improved by making use of the latest count data, household survey data as well as population and employment estimations. The model was also adjusted to be able to address the issues relevant to this particular project. Impact of the proposed development strategy as well as various network proposals were tested with the updated macro model. Expansion of the macro model was done by refining the network and the zone system for the study area. This forms the basis for converting the macro model to the meso model (developed in AIMSUN) where congestion due to intersections and control could be identified. This creates the opportunity to evaluate and refine final proposed network improvements and provide better input for cost calculations. The model could be improved, expanded and integrated between different levels of modeling that made it possible to quantify and evaluate the impact of various measures and proposed road improvements.