Procedure for Estimation of Trip Length Frequency Distributions (17-1)

A study was undertaken to determine the feasibility and means of theoretically estimating the trip length frequency distribution for "synthetic" urban transportation studies. The result of this study was the development of a procedure by which the trip length frequency distribution may be theoretically estimated. The procedure requires two inputs; the observed or estimated mean trip length and the maximum separation as defined by the network for the urban area. The procedure was tested and compared with the observed trip length frequency distributions from 18 transportation studies conducted in Texas for home-based and nonwork trip purposes, non-home based, and truck-taxi trip purposes. As a whole, the procedure was felt to give results ranging from adequate to excellent.