PTV Validate Road Network – Detailed and Ready for Routing

The network model used in PTV Validate is based on detailed NAVTEQ navigation networks. In addition to their high reliability, these networks have many other advantages:

• Continuously high and up-to-date quality by means of professional data collection and periodic updates (by NAVTEQ in three months intervals)
• Ready for routing – information on one-way streets, ramps or banned turns are taken into account

PTV has developed a special technique to reduce these highly detailed navigation networks to a computable size while keeping all relevant information of the original data.

The result of this unique automated method is a quality-ensured network model that contains all required transportation attributes. As this procedure is reversible, all results can be transferred back to the detailed network after computation.

Spatial Traffic Distribution

The traffic flows are calculated by assigning the origin and destination volumes between traffic zones onto the network. In order to determine these traffic zones, PTV has developed a special method for PTV Validate, where regional and traffic-related data as well as geographic and topographic information are taken into account.

PTV Validate Germany is divided into 9.600 traffic zones that represent approximately 8.500 inhabitants each on average.

Traffic Demand

The knowledge of the number of persons who want to travel from A to B is an essential element of PTV Validate. This demand of private transport is calculated by means of the simultaneous traffic demand model VISEVA using demographic information and empiric parameters like trip length distributions.

The PTV commuter matrix which is gained from official data is used to enhance the resulting matrix. The goods traffic demand is calculated separately.

Traffic Volume Calculation

Combining the network model and the transportation demand, it is possible to calculate traffic volumes for every single link of the network by using VISUM. Both official count location data and existing traffic models are used to calibrate the results of PTV Validate.

Thus PTV Validate provides the average daily traffic for every link in every direction and differentiated by car and HGV. In addition to that, PTV RushHour provides a dynamic version with data that is differentiated by the hour.