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Information about the TRM Version 6 Model Update
Chris Lukasina, MPO Director
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The Triangle Regional Model (TRM) is one of the core tools employed by the Capital Area MPO. It is developed through a partnership with our MPO, the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro MPO, NCDOT, GoTriangle, and the Institute for Transportation Research and Education (ITRE) at NC State. It allows the partners to run computer simulations of traffic in the future, which aides in the prioritization of transportation projects by identifying deficiencies in the existing infrastructure. This prioritization takes place during the development of the Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP) every four years as well as many of our corridor studies and small or large area studies. At the completion of the MTP, the model outputs are used to determine whether the plan conforms to federally-mandated standards.
Due to the diligent efforts of the Triangle Regional Model Service Bureau and staff from both MPOs and NCDOT, the latest version of the model boasts strong statistical measures of accuracy. The attachment includes a review of these metrics.
Because the model is closely tied to the MTP, it is updated on a four year cycle as well. The latest effort to update the model from version five to six has recently been completed, and the new model is referred to as "Version 6" or "TRM v.6". Once fully adopted Version 6 will become the official model for the region, meaning that it must be used in any future planning work past that point. The approval process for the Version 6 modeling platform follows the same multi-step process as that of many of the other MTP related components and tool. The MPO is being asked to bless the model for use in MTP-related development activities. This allows continued investigation and improvement of the model during the development of the plan. Once the plan and accompanying model scenarios are completed and pass an air quality determination, the Executive Bo...
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