Renewal of Strategic Passenger Transport Models

VORtech will support Rijkswaterstaat Water Verkeer en Leefomgeving (WVL) in the renewal of their models for passenger transport.  

Need for renewal

Although these models have been in use for a long time and have proven their worth, a renewal is needed. All kinds of new developments lead to different mobility behavior. New questions and information needs cannot always be adequately answered with the current instrumentation. For example, since the Corona epidemic, people have been working from home much more often and are traveling at different times of the day. At the same time, the Dutch road network is increasingly heavily burdened, and the current models do not yet sufficiently take this into account. In order to include these types of effects, the models will have to be renewed in terms of traffic engineering, and therefore also in terms of software.  

In addition to improving traffic engineering modeling, there is also a need for better explainable, more transparent and more manageable modeling tools. The current models have been developed continuously over decades and have therefore often become very complex. This means that using them requires a lot of knowledge and effort. Moreover, this complexity sometimes makes it difficult to understand why the models produce certain results. It can then be difficult for policy makers to explain why certain choices are made.  

A multi-year collaboration

By means of a tender, Rijkswaterstaat WVL has started a multi-year collaboration with a group of companies and knowledge institutions to renew the models and the software. VORtech is part of this group. Together with the company Significance, we are tasked with software aspects. 

This is once again a project that fully meets all aspects that are important for us in our work. It gives us the opportunity to upgrade the software to modern software standards and, moreover, the new traffic models that are developed by other parties will undoubtedly bring great algorithmic challenges. We also see this project as socially relevant. We are happy to be able to contribute to good mobility policy that keeps the Dutch economy strong and allows all people to move freely, regardless of their personal situation.