Dear user,

Our growing development team is working on all kinds of new features. We are excited to share our plans, starting with Emme 3.1 Beta—available today for Windows. Read on to learn about new features and how to get it.

INRO is hitting the road to attend local Emme Users' Conferences. We will be demonstrating the latest features, and giving you a preview of more to come. Upcoming events include Seattle and Vancouver, BC this week, followed by Ottawa-Gatineau. A great line up of presentations from local modellers are sure to spark active discussion. More events are scheduled this year in London and Dunkerque, France.

The 2009 calendar is taking shape, with the annual Ontario Emme Users' Conference and the 5th Asian Emme Users' Conference in Malaysia. If you would like INRO's help to organize a local event in your corner of the world, please let us know.

We're excited to hear what you think of our new features. All comments are welcome at support@inro.ca. Here's a snapshot of what you can expect:

• Visualize your models with our new ArcGIS plug-in for Emme. You'll have access to geo-referenced maps and GIS data directly from within Emme. Whether local or live, vector or raster, your ArcGIS map layers appear right alongside native Emme map layers just as they would in ArcMap, including symbology. Put your existing ArcGIS desktop licences to work in Emme. Learn more…
• Internationalization. With thousands of users spread over six continents, INRO knows it's a big world out there. Now, Emme knows it too. Emme 3.1 Beta includes support for internationalization, meaning that your database, GUI, and worksheets can speak your language. INRO partners around the world are working on translations; if you'd like to know more, or to help with your own language, contact support@inro.ca. Learn more…

Emme 3.1 Beta is available for download to all users with valid software support agreements. If yours has lapsed, don't hesitate to contact us at sales@inro.ca about updating it.

We'd also like to let you know about a few exciting features that are currently in the pipeline for future releases:

• Parallelized traffic assignment. We've been working on multi-threading our classic auto assignment algorithm for parallel computations; users doing auto assignments on multi-core machines will soon be able to harness the power of their multiple processors for dramatic speed improvements.
• Path-based assignment. Our new and innovative traffic assignment algorithm takes advantage of today's larger RAM capacity to store paths and deliver assignment results faster, and with far greater precision. Faster processing means greater productivity, while tighter convergence enables planners to evaluate the economic costs and benefits of a given scenario with higher precision. Path-based assignment also allows for interactive path analysis, including generalized select-link/select-node analysis and a variety of attributue skims.
• Improved demand adjustment algorithm. The most popular Emme macro is about to get even better. With the addition of a demand constraint term, you can adjust matrices to traffic counts while better preserving the structure of the original demand.

By 2013, the first light rail line will ease congestion in Tel Aviv's city center. Until then, construction of a 10-km underground span with 10 stations will disrupt traffic in the densest part of the city. The transport ministry embarked on a mitigation strategy for road closures. The affected area covers 40 km², including the entire city centre, 10 km of the Ayalon Highway with 7 interchanges, and over 300 signalized intersections. The calibrated model represents one of the largest and most congested Dynameq projects to date. Learn more about the results.

With the release of version 1.3 in February 2008, Dynameq expanded the scope of DTA applications to larger, more congested networks with a new DTA method and a host of performance improvements. Already, these features have proven indispensible to large DTA models in Montreal and Tel Aviv.

Many transport agencies are considering road pricing strategies to address growing congestion. Dynameq 1.4 will enable transport planners to model road pricing like never before. The only transport planning software that combines fast microsimulation with equilibrium assignment will soon add a generalized cost assignment feature. No tool can model realistic traffic congestion on a network large enough to show diversions due to tolls, and fast enough to consider many design alternatives. Dynameq will.

At INRO, we take pride in our software and want you to be able to use it to its fullest. For years we've maintained web forums dedicated to helping users connect with us and with each other for greater productivity. Of course, we only take part of the credit; it's really our users who make the forums as vibrant as they are.

Here's a simple trick, discovered on our Emme forum, that will help you create transport accessibility maps from your Emme models. Using Emme's “O-D pair values by zone” worksheet, you can generate isochronal maps showing the cost to reach a given point from another on the map. That map will look something like the following:

Here's how to produce this map, in five easy steps:

1. Open the worksheet. In the Worksheet Explorer, browse to General / Matrices / O-D pair values by zone.
2. Load your shape file. In the “Zone boundaries” layer, choose your “Polygon file” by browsing to your map's shape file. In the Winnipeg demo project, you'll want to choose “WinnipegZones.shp” in your project's “Media” folder.
3. Establish the correspondence between your shape file and your Emme model. In the Zone Boundary layer, choose “Advanced....” In the window that appears, choose the correct field in the “Node ID” drop-down. For Winnipeg, choose “[WinnipegZones #0 N8 ] ZONEID.”
4. Set up your isochrones. Open up the “O-D pair values” layer. Set “values” to a result matrix. For example, “mf6/5” is the automobile transit time matrix for the Winnipeg demo project, divided by 5 to represent five-minute increments. You can change 5 to whatever time interval you want.
5. Choose an origin or destination. Just double-click the zone that you want to be at the centre of your isochrones. Depending on the value of the “Position” field, this zone may be either a trip origin or destination.

Our user forums are open to all users with valid software support agreements, and users post interesting ideas, tips, and queries each and every week. For more information about the forums, simply click here. If your SSA has lapsed, it isn't too late to update it; simply contact us at sales@inro.ca.

INRO brings leading-edge research and software to the transportation planning field. INRO software products are used by thousands of transport planners and modellers in over 70 countries. INRO continues to innovate in the field it helped define, with a strong tradition of research and new product development for transport planning and simulation. Read more about INRO.