Absorbing Markov Process OD Estimation and a Transportation Network Simulation Model

Abstract

Most studies of traffic network simulations aim to calculate travel times or traffic volumes as accurately as possible using origin-destination (OD) traffic volumes (i.e., an OD matrix). In general, estimating OD volumes is very difficult, and the performance of the simulation largely depends on OD estimation. This study proposes a transportation network simulation model that makes use of OD estimation. This simulation model estimates OD volumes using the absorbing Markov process, which can easily estimate OD volumes using only traffic counts at intersections, and which simulates the transportation network dynamically. This enables us to simulate the network states more closely to actual traffic counts.