Part A – Destination Choice
Due to the construction of several mega apartment complexes just south of campus, a developer is considering the construction of a new movie theater complex, “Mega Movies”, on the east side of Gainesville. The developer has hired you to help determine the viability of building this theater complex.
Destination Choice From a trip generation model, you have already determined that 200 vehicle (assume auto-only) trips to the movies will be made from this housing area on a typical weekend evening, based on socio-economic characteristics.
From the destination choice logit model developed, determine how many trips from this housing area will be attracted by each of the two existing major movie theaters and the proposed theater. Logit model variable coefficient values:
Variable Coeff.
Constant 0.10
Travel Time (min) -0.20
Available parking (in hundreds of spaces) 0.40
Movie ticket price ($) -0.25
Number of screens 0.30
Movie theater characteristics:
Movie Theater
Variable Mega Movies
(new)
Regal Cinemas Royal Park
Travel time (min) 15 15 20
Available parking (spaces) 550 500 450
Movie ticket price ($) 8.50 6.50 7.50
Number of screens 17 14 16
If the developer of the new theater wants to capture at least 75% of all the movie trips from this housing area, how many more screens would they need to add?
Would it be worth it economically if the cost per additional screen is $2.5 per additional person attracted?
Assume that the average vehicle occupancy is 2 persons (i.e., every vehicle trip generates 2 tickets sold).
Part B – Route Choice
Route Choice
The cost of roadway improvements to the developer is a function of the amount of traffic being generated by the theater as well as the routes that these vehicles use in getting to/from the theater.
Thus, you need to determine traffic demand on the available routes between the housing area (apartment complexes) and the proposed theater site.
There are two potential routes from this housing area to the proposed theater site.
The total flow on these two routes (origin-to-destination demand plus other traffic) is 5500 vehicles.
These routes have the following speed and length characteristics: Route Free-Flow Speed (mi/h) Length (mi)
1 40 3.5
2 35 3.75
It is known that the individual route travel times increase (in units of minutes) according to the following functions (with x in units of 1000 vehicles per hour):
Route
Travel Time increase,
as a function of traffic volume
1 x1
2 0.25×2
(a) Determine user equilibrium (UE) flows and travel times
(b) Determine the system-optimal (SO) flows and travel times
(c) Compare the total travel times for all vehicles (in vehicle-hours) under UE and SO