The Danish National Passenger Model – model specification and results

Abstract

The paper describes the structure of the new Danish National Passenger model and provides on this basis a general discussion of large-scale model design, cost-damping and model validation. The paper aims at providing three main contributions to the existing literature. Firstly, at the general level, the paper provides a description of a large-scale forecast model with a discussion of the linkage between population synthesis, demand and assignment. Secondly, the paper gives specific attention to model specification and in particular choice of functional form and costdamping. Specifically we suggest a family of logarithmic spline functions and illustrate how it is applied in the model. Thirdly and finally, we evaluate model sensitivity and performance by evaluating the distance distribution and elasticities. In the paper we present results where the spline-function is compared with more traditional function types and it is indicated that the spline-function provides a better description of the data. Results are also provided in the form of a back-casting exercise where the model is tested in a back-casting scenario to 2002.