The SACSIM model became one of the first activity-based model systems to be applied in regional planning when it was used for the 2008 RTP for the Sacramento Region. Since that time, the authors have designed and implemented new capabilities in SACSIM to represent various types of pricing policies. These include:
• Road pricing, which can include managed lanes, cordon pricing, time-of-day pricing, etc. This is implemented by including best path skims for priced and non-priced networks, and incorporating the toll/non-toll choice in SACSIM. This includes creating separate network skims for various value of time (VOT) ranges and 12 or more different periods of the day, so that the demand model and network supply model use consistent paths and choices.
• Transit passes and discounts. The representation of transit has been improved in a number of ways, including different network skims for 5 different periods of the day, and 3 different transit path types (local bus, light rail, and commuter rail/commuter coach). Transit fares are reduced for specific person types (youth, students, seniors) by applying discount factors to the full fares. Also, we have implemented a longer term transit pass ownership model, which is sensitive to transit level of service and pass cost, but acts to eliminate the marginal fare for any single transit trip.
The presentation will first describe how these pricing capabilities have been implemented into the Daysim modeling framework, and then describe the details of how they have been parameterized, tested, and calibrated in the SACSIM context. We will present comparisons of the sensitivity of the model system to pricing policies when run with and without these new capabilities.