Modelling choice of Time-of-Day in the Danish National Travel Model

Resumé

Modelling travellers’ choice of time-of-day (ToD) is essential for accurately forecasting congestion effects, public transport demand, and road pricing impacts. This paper presents the weekday (WD) person demand model developed for the Danish National Travel Model (GMM4), covering domestic travel from Monday to Friday. The model adopts a tour-based structure with multiple trip purposes and incorporates a wide range of transport modes, including conventional and electric vehicles. A key innovation is the application of a sampling procedure at the ToD choice level, while maintaining full alternatives for mode and destination choices. Model estimation is based on Danish National Travel Survey data (2006–2023) and emphasises robustness, policy applicability, and interpretability. In particular, advanced cost damping formulations capture variations in value of travel time across individuals and trips. Additional extensions include variables reflecting COVID-19 impacts and family constraints. The proposed ToD modelling approach represents a state-of-the-art contribution to tour-based demand modelling and provides a strong basis for evaluating policy measures, especially road pricing, which is currently of high relevance in Denmark.