Genesee County Modeling Development Committee

Purpose of the Modeling Development Committee

The purpose of the Modeling Development Committee will be to guide the model development process, and ensure the best possible data is used in the creation of the 2035 model. 

What is the Model?

The Genesee County Urban Travel Demand Model is used to forecast travel on major roads in the county.  It is a computer simulation of the transportation system.

Elements of the Model:                                                            

Roads- State trunklines, principal arterials, minor arterials, and some collectors.

Centroid Connectors- Feed traffic onto the road network and represent local roads.

Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZs) – The entire county is broken down into specific areas, whose boundaries represent natural or man-made obstacles. Census and other types of data are collected and analyzed based on these zones; each zone has population data and employment

data associated with it.

Purpose of the Model:

The model takes all the households in the county and all the employers (broken down by retail, service, manufacturing, etc) and shows where people travel.  The model is calibrated to a base year (year that all the data will be collected for) and traffic counts are used to show how accurate the model is in assigning cars to a particular roadway.  After the base year is calibrated, future year population and employment data for 2035 is put into the model. 

The output of the 2035 model is used to show where capacity issues are projected to occur. Staff can then  prioritize which roads will need congestion management in the future.  All potential widening projects and new roads are tested on the model to see how they will affect traffic flow area-wide.  The model is also used to test for air quality conformity analysis on all projects that add capacity to our road network.

For minutes of  the Genesee County Modeling Development Committee meetings,

click here.

Reports

Genesee County Urban Travel Demand Model Calibration Report

Base Year Employment Data Report

Traffic Analysis Zone (TAZ) Characteristics Sheets