@Transportist I really enjoyed reading this and there is a lot of truth in what you say. When you argue for small incremental moves, how exactly would you achieve that? Or are you calling for a whole rethink of the modeling process (4 step/ABM)? If we are to bring in visioning...how do we quantify it? Or I am totally off base in trying to think of this within the traditional paradigms? Thanks for writing this.
@Transportist The issue I am seeing with ABMs in practice is that agencies (and their consultants) find it too cumbersome to use and some want a traditional 4 step model. The argument is that its too complex and they are unable to make changes to the model. ActivitySIM (when it gets released) is supposed to overcome these issues but my understanding is that it is the CT-RAMP structure (but with Python).
@Transportist and you are right about computational irreducibility being ignored. Even NCHRP 08-110 (https://nap.nationalacademies.org/download/25637#), a very good report otherwise, does not mention it. I wonder if its due to the lack of budget to do so? TMIP-EMAT can potentially be a tool to evaluate multiple future scenarios and can take a bite at the computational irreducibility question?
