A method to estimate trip O‐D patterns using a neural network approach

This paper proposes a method which identifies the trip origin‐destination (O‐D) matrix when many pairs of values for the right hand side column (B) and the bottom row (A) of the matrix are given. The method considers B and A as the cause (input) and effect (output) of a system, respectively, and that the O‐D matrix represents the relationship between the cause and the effect. The relationship which satisfies all pairs of the cause and the effect data exactly may not be identified, but, should a general pattern of the relationship exist, it should emerge when many data sets of B and A are given. Two steps are involved in the method: the first step examines if a consistent O‐D pattern exists; if a pattern is found to exist, the second step identifies the values of the elements of the O‐D matrix. The first step is based on the shape of the possibility distributions of the values of the matrix elements. The second step uses a simple back‐propagation neural network. The method is useful to problems that require identification of the cause‐effect relationship when many sets of data for the cause and effect are available, for example, the station‐to‐station travel pattern on a rapid transit line when the total entering and exiting passengers are known at each station for many different days. The model can also be applied to other transportation problems which involve input and output relation.