Manual Traffic Allocation for Small-Town Networks

A new manual travel allocation spreadsheet for street networks in small towns is described. The method is useful for rural planning organizations or state departments of transportation that must cost-effectively develop transportation models for small towns that expect growth and new transportation facilities. Unlike the usual computerized network model, this spreadsheet combines available census data and maps with expert judgment to assign traffic volumes manually to small networks with up to 10 internal and 12 external zones. The spreadsheet produces origin-destination matrices for manual or computer-based assignment. A case study application in Pilot Mountain, North Carolina, demonstrates the method.