Since 2012, RSG has served as an on-call contractor for task orders to enhance the San Diego Association of Government’s (SANDAG’s) activity-based model. These task work orders have included model calibration updates and implementation of Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2) C04 recommendations on pricing and reliability. Work has also included improving the model sensitivities for active and emerging transportation modes, improving the modeling of special generators, and implementing the travel model in ActivitySim.

In 2019, SANDAG sought help updating its travel demand model to use new data to reflect current transportation behavior. We collaborated with them to calibrate their model using travel survey data from spatially intelligent smartphone surveys using rMove™. We also validated the activity-based and disaggregate commercial vehicle models against traffic counts. As a result, SANDAG’s models now include several enhancements that consider micromobility, mobility-as-a-service (MaaS), and autonomous vehicles.

In addition, we developed an innovative benefit-cost analysis (BCA) tool to support the alternatives analysis performed as part of SANDAG’s San Diego Forward: The 2019 Federal Regional Transportation Plan. The BCA tool we developed, which is still in use by the agency, incorporated several sources of benefits/costs and leveraged the detailed information produced by SANDAG’s activity-based travel demand model. Importantly, the tool used SANDAG's disaggregate activity-based model outputs. This lessened aggregation biases and delivered key insights into which regional travelers received the benefits or shouldered the burdens of regional plan investments and policies. This level of analysis helped SANDAG address equity concerns.