Iterating between a router and a traffic micro-simulation is an increasibly accepted method for doing traffic assignment. Specifically, we look into the issues of uniqueness, variability, and robustness and validation.
Variability however is considerable.
By variability we mean the variation of the simulation of a given plan set by just changing the random seed. We show then results from three different micro-simulations under the same iteration scenario in order to test for the robustness of the results under different implementations. We find the results encouraging, also when comparing to reality and with a traditional assignment result. Submitted to Transportation Research C. Return to 2000 working papers list.