My First Four-Step Model: A simple and accessible tool to teach travel demand modeling

Travel demand modeling is often taught using a &lsquo;bottom-up&rsquo; approach&mdash;students first learn the statistical and theoretical<br />foundations of modeling, and then work with individual steps of the model. Only after many courses do students run<br />a complete travel demand model. In this article, I demonstrate a &lsquo;top-down&rsquo; approach that I use in my introductory<br />Planning Methods course. After a brief introduction to demand modeling, students run a simplified model and interpret<br />outputs. While most of my students will not become modelers, this provides them valuable experience to communicate<br />with modelers, understand the applications of modeling, and critically evaluate model outputs.