Questions with Multiple Choice Answers

According to Weiner (2016)

city congestion is a big economic and environmental problem because most people live in them. Economic and infrastructure development planning seeks an urban transportation system. The Urban Transportation Planning System (UTPS) is a traffic modeling tool established in Chicago in 1962. This tool was designed by the administrations of Urban Mass Transportation and Federal Highway for both short and long-term planning. It is concerned with system analysis, which includes both automated and manual planning methods. UTPS is made up of computer programs, documentation of attendant, guides and manuals as pointed out by Weiner (2016). It covers analytical categories such as analysis of the highway network and transit analysis of a network and estimation of demand. Data capture and manipulation as well as sketch planning is also comprised in the system. It accomplishes this in four steps; it estimates person trips for each TAZ (Trips Traffic Assignment) and distributes person trips from one TAZ to another. It then converts person trips to vehicle trips and lastly, assigns vehicles to the network. The system has so far been able to forecast mode choice by introducing multinomial function of logic. It has also been able to assign auto trips to congested road network by the use of user equilibrium algorithm.

The system has however been marred by some flaws and biases

in that, there is no consideration when it comes to coding of free speed, the capacity of lanes as well as the type of the facility and area (Abdelgawad & Abdulhai, 2009). Trip generation and the movement of goods are not handled in an excellent manner by the system as pointed out by Abdelgawad et.al (2009). Atmospheric omissions occur because the road link flows and the speeds by time period is not determined by the system. The feedback of the four-stage model was biased by the system’s efficiency and the emergency cases are not part of the system’s code.

References

Abdelgawad, H., & Abdulhai, B. (2009). Emergency evacuation planning as a network design problem: a critical review. Transportation Letters, 1(1), 41-58.

Weiner, E. (2016). Urban transportation planning in the United States: history, policy, and practice. Springer.