| A transportation system to move students, faculty and staff on a university campus and its surrounding community continues to be an unmet need for most North American universities. A very important reason behind this problem is that effective methodologies to model travel demand in a university setting are not available, nor are analysis tools to compare the existing mobility with the projected mobility where major transportation improvement is planned for a university setting.; In this study, a multi-modal travel demand model was developed to model the travel demand of students, faculty and staff in various transportation scenarios on a university campus and its surrounding community. The modeling methodology has several innovative characteristics, which adapt the model to a university setting and differentiate it from traditional travel demand models, including: (1) Individual trip generation and trip distribution information, such as class schedule, residence addresses, office addresses, etc., were used to construct student, faculty and staff trip tables. (2) A multi-modal transportation network was constructed that reflects the necessary interaction among motor vehicles, pedestrians, parking facilities and public transit facilities. (3) A time-of-day model that uses probability distribution functions (PDF) to simulate temporal distribution of trips was developed to realize the incremental trip assignment.; The model used to evaluate an existing transportation system and two alternatives, each with a Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system assumed constructed on the Kansas State University (KSU) main campus. A multi-measure evaluation approach was developed to evaluate the mobility impact of the transportation alternatives examined. The evaluation results indicate that an appropriately designed PRT system could improve the mobility on a university campus, by saving travel time, increasing predictability of travel time throughout a weekday, relieving traffic congestion, and making distant parking lots as accessible as those close to or within the core campus area.; The model performed well and generated reasonable results. The study methodology developed should be usable, without significant change, to other universities that have similar size and travel characteristics. |
