TRANSIMS: Applications and Development Workshop

April 8–9, 2010
Application of TRANSIMS for Highway Work Zones: Travel Pattern and Mobility Impacts

Jun-Seok Oh

List of Authors
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Jun-Seok Oh
Associate Professor
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5316
Phone: (269) 276-3216
FAX: (269) 276-3211
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Abstract
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This project applies TRANSIMS to highway work zones analysis with emphasis on travel pattern changes and work-zone mobility impacts, motivated by TRANSIMS' seamless capability to analyze both future travel demand behavior during highway construction and work-zone mobility impacts resulting from proposed lane closures. As TRANSIMS is capable of analyzing dynamic nature of traffic stream as well as travelers' activity patterns, it could be a viable option for analyzing the impact of major highway work zones. Especially for the case of long-term highway closures, it is important to understand not only mobility impact but also travel pattern changes. As a case study, this study develops a TRANSIMS model for the southeast Michigan area that includes Detroit and the surrounding seven counties where 4.9 million people are living, and investigates how the travel pattern evolves with the freeway segment closure by applying travelers' day-to-day evolution behavior in TRANSIMS.

Biography
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Dr. Jun-Seok Oh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Construction Engineering at Western Michigan University. He received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from University of California, Irvine in 2001. With 25 years of experience in the transportation field, his unique strength is an extensive knowledge of both traffic engineering and transportation modeling through his versatile experiences as a researcher or a professional engineer. His modeling experience includes macro-level travel demand analysis, mesoscopic dynamic traffic assignment models, and microscopic traffic simulation models. His expertise in simulation modeling started in 1996 at the Institute of Transportation Studies at University of California-Irvine where he was responsible for the dynamic traffic simulation-based research framework. With extensive experience in meso and micro simulation models, he has been striving to bridge the gap between transportation planners and traffic engineers by introducing new applications of microscopic simulation models. He has published more than 40 papers in international journals and proceedings in the area of travel demand and network analysis since 2000.