My life has more meaning and purpose now. My skills and efforts have been validated. (... as 'For Once in My Life' by Stevie Wonder plays in the background.)
...
Thanks to this post (https://lnkd.in/dpbJv4HK) from Tim Gent and Graham James, which made it into my feed, and the link in Graham's post (https://lnkd.in/dsa3j5tv), I learned of the inclusion in the DfT's updated Unit M3.1 TAG (for the Modelling Practitioner) of guidance around microsimulation models.
🔗 https://lnkd.in/dsrfEUBv (DfT)
If it were a leader's keynote speech at a political party conference, and I was trying to make a punchy point in a short radio piece, I would tell you that the May 2020 issue of the same TAG unit had 9 mentions of microsimulation/micro-simulation, while this May 2024 issue features 92 instances, including a whole 16-page appendix!
Having, at some times in my career, felt like I was having to battle to justify the suitability of a robust-but-different analysis tool to other sceptical co-professionals, this, I reckon, is a milestone moment for the use of these tools, and especially Paramics Microsimulation and Aimsun.
There's nothing earth-shattering in the Appendix. Most of it describes what I would promote as good practice and give as advice, including:
✅ Tiered approaches within scheme appraisal (C.1.4);
✅ That some of the main body guidance is relevant to larger models (C.3.1);
✅ The need to judiciously apply the 60-second / 15% journey time criteria to what are often shorter routes (C.3.10); and
✅ The utility of queue length data for calibration (C.4.7–C.4.9).
It's welcome to see WebTAG evolving and maturing in this way.
#transportplanning
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5movery good explanation of the range of Locks options in ModelIT here, it really is built around the Grid Snap for good reason but worth noting that toggling them on and off as you model is the way to get those different geometry configurations when needed (giving priority to end point, angular, construction line etc).