Abstract

Montreal Master Plan, 2005, proposed population intensification near transit nodes as a measure to reduce the dependency on cars. However, the impact of these policies has not been studied in detail. This research aims to analyze the influence of these policies on the Greater Montreal Area (GMA) traffic using a deterministic user-equilibrium traffic assignment model. Three intensification scenarios were considered to illustrate the volume-capacity ratio changes in GMA's road network under the impact of these scenarios in 2013 considering population increase. In the first scenario, the redistribution of the forecasted new trips among the 104 traffic zones of GMA was applied based on their natural growth rate. In the second scenario, 20% intensification of the GMA population growth was applied in the zones containing subway stations, and a modal shift from cars to subway was assumed for this population based on the modal ratios of the 2003 O-D survey. The third scenario is similar to the second one, but with 50% intensification ratio. The proposed approach is expected to provide a simplified method that can be applied to investigate intensification policies by assuming certain levels of intensification and modal shift at specific zones. However, the assumptions for this approach have to be used carefully to get meaningful results