Modelling commercial traffic for a metropolitan region

Abstract Modeling commercial traffic for a Metropolitan Region allows to better understand urban dynamics, to support urban planning and to evaluate the potential of alternative vehicle concepts. However, current approaches require a knowledge-intensive and data-heavy modelling of transportation demand. This study presents a lightweight approach utilizing publicly available macroscopic data on traffic volumes and vehicle behaviors to microscopically simulate a set of vehicle tours representative for commercial traffic in a metropolitan region. The approach encompasses various vehicle types, economic sectors, and types of activities, and addresses the intricacies of trans-regional traffic. Furthermore, to illustrate the applicability and validity, tours are simulated for a business day in 2023 in the Munich Metropolitan Region and compared to vehicles counted at traffic counting stations on roads. The validation shows that the approach yields a representative set of commercial tours, with the number of simulated vehicles deviating from the counted vehicles by 1.17%.