Temporal origin–destination matrix estimation of passenger car trips. Case study: Medellin, Colombia

Abstract This paper develops a passenger car demand synthesis model based on entropy maximization to estimate origin-destination matrices for passenger cars trips using traffic counts for different years in an urban area. The model discussed in this paper improve current Origin-Destination matrix estimation techniques incorporating the total number of passenger car trips in the transportation network as a constraint, and secondary data sources for different years, giving a point of comparison for the results. The resulting model reveals that the trips are an exponential function of the Lagrange multipliers related to the trip cost, the observed traffic counts in the links, and the total number of passenger cars trips in the transportation network. Based on the results of this research, the authors recommend to the transportation authorities to collect traffic counts in strategic locations in the urban road network for different years to estimate OD matrices in an easier and cheaper way than the traditional OD surveys. The performance of the formulation for different years (2005-2008) is tested in the Medellin (Colombia) network