The need for development of the Maryland Statewide Transportation Model (MSTM) is many-fold. The two major Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) in the region are the Baltimore Metropolitan Council (BMC) and Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG), which currently have transportation models for planning purposes. The travel demand models of BMC and MWCOG are well suited for their respective jurisdictions. However, there are issues that must be addressed in the context of a multi-state region. These include: (1) the interaction of travel at the boundary between the two MPOs, (2) modeling of transportation in regions outside the MPO boundaries such as Western Maryland or the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay, (3) estimating the impact of travel which passes through the multi-state area, particularly freight travel with heavy trucks that are often a large share of traffic on rural interstate highways. For these reasons, a number of states have developed statewide models that are heavily used to aid transportation planning and travel demand decision-making (Giaimo and Schiffer 2005, NCHRP 2006, Parsons Brinckerhoff 2010, Donnelley et al. 2010, Erhardt 2012).

Primary development of MSTM has occurred through the course of the last three years (2009-2012). The novelty of MSTM is the use of a three-layer structure. The first layer includes macro scale travel patterns from the entire U.S. and the third layer includes travel patterns at a finer urban level detail. The second layer is statewide in scope and is an amalgamation of the first and third layer. The trip-based model consists of eighteen trip purposes that are cross-classified by five income categories, eleven modes of travel, and four time-of-day periods. The model components have been estimated and calibrated using the results of household travel surveys done across the major metropolitan areas in the state during in 2007. The MSTM has been validated against traffic counts and vehicle miles travel data for the year 2007. MSTM is used as an instrument for statewide travel demand modeling in Maryland and policy decision making for scenario planning.