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Standard economic policy evaluation allows the realization of projects if the aggregated economic benefit outweighs their costs. The use of one single aggregated welfare measure for evaluating and ranking projects has often been criticized for many reasons. A major issue is that differentiated effects on individuals or subgroups of the population are not taken into consideration. This leads to the need for transport planning tools that provide additional information for politicians and decision makers. The microscopic multi-agent simulation approach presented in this paper is capable of helping to design better solutions in such situations. In particular, it is shown that the inclusion of individual income in utility calculations allows a better understanding of problems linked to public acceptance. First, individual income-contingent utility functions are estimated based on survey data in order to describe human mobility behavior. Subsequently, using the MATSim framework, the implementation is tested in a test scenario. Furthermore, and going beyond Franklin (2006), it is shown that the approach works in a large-scale real world example. Based on a hypothetical speed increase of public transit, effects on the welfare distribution of the population are discussed. It is shown that the identification of winners and losers seems to be quite robust. However, results indicate that a conversion or aggregation of individual utility changes for welfare analysis is highly dependent on the functional form of the utility functions as well as on the choice of the aggregation procedure. ; BMBF, 03NAPAI4, Transport und Verkehr: Verbundprojekt ADVEST: Adaptive Verkehrssteuerung; Teilprojekt Verkehrsplanung und Verkehrssteuerung in Megacities

In democratically organized societies, the implementation of measures with regressive effects on welfare distribution tends to be complicated because of low public acceptance. The microscopic multiagent simulation approach presented in this paper can help to design better solutions in such situations. Income can be included in utility calculations for a better understanding of problems linked to acceptability. This paper shows how the approach can be used in policy evaluation when income is included in user preferences. With the MATSim framework, the implementation is tested in a simple scenario. Furthermore the approach works in a large-scale, real-world example. On the basis of a hypothetical price and speed increase of public transit, effects on the welfare distribution of the population are discussed. This approach, in contrast with applied economic policy analysis, allows choice modeling and economic evaluation to be realized consistently. ; BMBF, 03NAPAI4, Transport und Verkehr: Verbundprojekt ADVEST: Adaptive Verkehrssteuerung; Teilprojekt Verkehrsplanung und Verkehrssteuerung in Megacities

Tolls are frequently discussed policies to reduce traffic in cities. However, road pricing measures are seldom implemented due to high investments and unpopularity. Transportation planning tools can support planning authorities by solving those problems if they take into account the following aspects: – Demographic attributes like income and time constraints – Time reactions to the policy – Schedule changes of population's individuals during the whole day Our approach uses multi-agent simulations to model and simulate full daily plans. Each of our agents has a utility function that appraises the performance of a typical, microscopically simulated day. The sum of all utility changes to a policy change can be interpreted as the change in the system's welfare thus the economic evaluation of a measure straightforward. The approach is tested with travel behavior of the Zurich metropolitan region in Switzerland. Several tolling schemes are investigated. It is shown that the simulation can be used to model travelers' reactions to time-dependent tolls in a way most existing transportation planning tools are not able to do. It is demonstrated that route adjustment only, as is done in many traditional transport planning packages, results in no economic gains from the tolls. As time-dependent tolls are a much-debated subject in transportation politics, the ability to fully model such tolls and the reactions of travelers may help to find better toll schemes. In a world where individuals have more and more freedom to schedule their daily plans, agent-based simulations offer an intuitive way to research complex topics with lots of interdependencies.