Abstract

Leveraging ArcGIS and Python for Route Choice Analysis
Track: Transportation
Authors: Ron Dalumpines

Route choice analysis (RCA) involves the process of collecting data on travelers' route choices. With the advances in global positioning systems (GPS), traces of actual routes taken by travelers are easily made available. Thanks to the availability of geographic information systems (GIS) that made the management and processing of GPS data much easier. In particular, the incorporation of scripting languages such as Python in ArcGIS have made the development of RCA toolkit possible. The RCA toolkit is used to extract around 50 variables for each of the 5,181 trips collected during a GPS-assisted time use survey. The experience from this exercise illustrates the benefits of leveraging ArcGIS and Python. The use of RCA toolkit developed using ArcGIS and Python has resulted in huge time savings. Manual processing of 5,181 trips to generate variables for route choice modeling will take at least two weeks; using the toolkit took only 12 hours.