The Mobility Topography Model for Substantializing and Projecting Transportation in Cities

Cities are built on transportation strategies. The constructed urban environment is influenced by the accumulation of individual transport choices, and also by the decisions of transportation planners who continue to rely on tools designed to hasten the expansion of car culture. Past experiences incorporating cars, trains, and horses have demonstrated that paradigm shifts in mobility technology impact activity patterns in cities. Autonomous vehicles will certainly revolutionize urban mobility, but the positive and negative consequences of driverless personal transport on cities and societies remain unknown. The probability of a beneficial impact will increase with more and better tools available for analyzing existing transportation habits and projecting future possibilities. The mobility topography model (MTM) introduced in this paper is a multimodal route simulator that evaluates probable modal choice for hypothetical travelers, derived using actual ridership data, transportation infrastructure, and economic conditions. An application has been developed for users to adjust input parameters and quickly project the potential impacts of evolving technologies and changing circumstances. The MTM is flexible, general, and well suited for casting holistic projections of future scenarios, rather than for precise accounting of specific interventions. The model is demonstrated in Singapore today and into the future.