Origin-Destination Travel Demand Estimation: An Approach That Scales Worldwide, and Its Application to Five Metropolitan Highway Networks

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Zhang, Chao, Arora, Neha, Bian, Christopher, Li, Yechen, Ng, Willa, Tomkins, Andrew, Yan, Bin, Zhang, Janny, Osorio, Carolina
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Zhang, Chao
Arora, Neha
Bian, Christopher
Li, Yechen
Ng, Willa
Tomkins, Andrew
Yan, Bin
Zhang, Janny
Osorio, Carolina
author_facet Zhang, Chao
Arora, Neha
Bian, Christopher
Li, Yechen
Ng, Willa
Tomkins, Andrew
Yan, Bin
Zhang, Janny
Osorio, Carolina
contents Estimating Origin-Destination (OD) travel demand is vital for effective urban planning and traffic management. Developing universally applicable OD estimation methodologies is significantly challenged by the pervasive scarcity of high-fidelity traffic data and the difficulty in obtaining city-specific prior OD estimates (or seed ODs), which are often prerequisite for traditional approaches. Our proposed method directly estimates OD travel demand by systematically leveraging aggregated, anonymized statistics from Google Maps Traffic Trends, obviating the need for conventional census or city-provided OD data. The OD demand is estimated by formulating a single-level, one-dimensional, continuous nonlinear optimization problem with nonlinear equality and bound constraints to replicate highway path travel times. The method achieves efficiency and scalability by employing a differentiable analytical macroscopic network model. This model by design is computationally lightweight, distinguished by its parsimonious parameterization that requires minimal calibration effort and its capacity for instantaneous evaluation. These attributes ensure the method's broad applicability and practical utility across diverse cities globally. Using segment sensor counts from Los Angeles and San Diego highway networks, we validate our proposed approach, demonstrating a two-thirds to three-quarters improvement in the fit to segment count data over a baseline. Beyond validation, we establish the method's scalability and robust performance in replicating path travel times across diverse highway networks, including Seattle, Orlando, Denver, Philadelphia, and Boston. In these expanded evaluations, our method not only aligns with simulation-based benchmarks but also achieves an average 13% improvement in it's ability to fit travel time data compared to the baseline during afternoon peak hours.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_00306
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Origin-Destination Travel Demand Estimation: An Approach That Scales Worldwide, and Its Application to Five Metropolitan Highway Networks
Zhang, Chao
Arora, Neha
Bian, Christopher
Li, Yechen
Ng, Willa
Tomkins, Andrew
Yan, Bin
Zhang, Janny
Osorio, Carolina
Emerging Technologies
Estimating Origin-Destination (OD) travel demand is vital for effective urban planning and traffic management. Developing universally applicable OD estimation methodologies is significantly challenged by the pervasive scarcity of high-fidelity traffic data and the difficulty in obtaining city-specific prior OD estimates (or seed ODs), which are often prerequisite for traditional approaches. Our proposed method directly estimates OD travel demand by systematically leveraging aggregated, anonymized statistics from Google Maps Traffic Trends, obviating the need for conventional census or city-provided OD data. The OD demand is estimated by formulating a single-level, one-dimensional, continuous nonlinear optimization problem with nonlinear equality and bound constraints to replicate highway path travel times. The method achieves efficiency and scalability by employing a differentiable analytical macroscopic network model. This model by design is computationally lightweight, distinguished by its parsimonious parameterization that requires minimal calibration effort and its capacity for instantaneous evaluation. These attributes ensure the method's broad applicability and practical utility across diverse cities globally. Using segment sensor counts from Los Angeles and San Diego highway networks, we validate our proposed approach, demonstrating a two-thirds to three-quarters improvement in the fit to segment count data over a baseline. Beyond validation, we establish the method's scalability and robust performance in replicating path travel times across diverse highway networks, including Seattle, Orlando, Denver, Philadelphia, and Boston. In these expanded evaluations, our method not only aligns with simulation-based benchmarks but also achieves an average 13% improvement in it's ability to fit travel time data compared to the baseline during afternoon peak hours.
title Origin-Destination Travel Demand Estimation: An Approach That Scales Worldwide, and Its Application to Five Metropolitan Highway Networks
topic Emerging Technologies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.00306