Developing a New Travel Demand Model in Cairo
citiME Develops Travel Demand Model to Improve Public Transport in Greater Cairo Region
To address public transportation inefficiencies in Egypt’s Greater Cairo region (GCR) and support sustainable urban development, the World Bank appointed in 2020 a consortium, including citiME, to implement a study to understand GCR mobility needs. Known as the GCR Mobility Assessment and Public Transport Improvement Study (MAPTIS), the program assessed the mobility needs of the Greater Cairo Region, identified infrastructure projects and policy measures to strengthen transport sector performance and supported Egypt’s SDG Vision 2030, and advised on solutions to streamline transport data collection, management and use.
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With an aim to build a robust digital foundation for analytics on mobility, MAPTIS integrated network data and mapped routes with travel demand, patterns, and behaviors to support strategic investment for sustainable transport that can deliver a step-change improvement. To understand gender-based travel needs and differences in accessibility, as well as assess the performance of the network to serve future demands of men, women, and marginalized groups, the program embraced smart data techniques and advanced technology for surveying, data management, and predictive modeling. Our role was to develop the travel demand model called MAPTIS Transport Model (MTM), which can be used to identify, develop, and assess opportunities to improve public transport provision in GCR.
The project involved modeling and managing multiple complex scenarios, and integrating multisourced, multimodal transport data of varying quality and age into a unified platform. We needed to take into account all available modes, considering that MAPTIS has private vehicles, taxis, and a range of public transport services, such as bus, minibus, metro, trains, and, in the future, bus rapid transit.
For all these various public transport modes, citiME had to assess current and future travel demands and provisions, considering population and economic growth, gender accessibility gaps, and network infrastructure to identify the best investment opportunities for transport improvement projects.
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They had to test different transport scenarios that support social and economic sustainability and improve transport options for women and the indigent, while also strengthening transport management and operations, reducing carbon emissions and environmental impact, and ensuring realistic infrastructure improvement and delivery solutions.
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​Using OpenPaths CUBE, CitiME developed a proportionate and strategic transport model by incorporating and balancing a range of datasets, including data for mobility assessment and census data, as well as non-traditional data, such as road network vehicular traffic volume from GPS sources.
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The model facilitated digital data management and analysis, providing insight into mobility trends to invest in transport projects that will deliver socially inclusive green development that boosts economic opportunities.
The team used the predictive model to assess mobility and the causes of mobility challenges, as well as analyse numerous scenarios to propose transport investment measures that support sustainability, accessibility, and deliverability.
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