A lot of development activities are going on at INRO and the EMME/2 Support Center these days, all in preparation for the Release 5.0, which is scheduled for the end of the year. As always, we shall concentrate in this column only on those developments which are already done and are currently in alpha testing.
The transit assignment (modules 5.11 and 5.31) has been enhanced to keep track of the new time component first waiting time. In many demand models, the first waiting time enters as a separate variable, since if the time table is known, the traveler may choose to eliminate some of the first waiting by leaving a bit later. The trip time component formerly called "waiting time" is still available, but is now called "total waiting time". Note that this new development does not alter at all the route choice model in the transit assignment, it just allows to compute and save -if requested by the user- one more time component matrix.
Up to now, it was not possible to modify the MODES attribute using the Network Calculator in module 2.41. This meant that the modes on a link had to be modified interactively with module 2.12. For network-wide modifications, it was often easier to punch out the base network with module 2.14, modify the MODES attribute in the punch file, and read the base network back in again with module 2.11. The new version of module 2.41 allows the user now to modify the MODES attribute systematically for a subset of links. This new feature is activated by simply specifying MODES as the variable to hold the result of the calculations. In this case, the module will not prompt the user for an algebraic expression (which would be meaningless for the modes attribute), but will give the user a choice to add modes, remove modes or set the link mode attribute of the selected subset of links. Of course, any attempt to remove all modes or those transit modes on a link which are currently used by transit lines are not valid and will be flagged. This new feature will make it much simpler to update the network when new modes are added to an existing EMME/2 data base. Moreover, since in most cases only a few of the 30 allowed modes are actually used, this new feature makes it also possible to use and manipulate the remaining modes as pseudo-modes containing 0-1 variables or the definition of user defined link subsets.
A color version of the PostScript format file for the GPL utility has been developed recently and is available on a beta test basis for those lucky EMME/2 users who have access to PostScript compatible color laser printer.
Much effort is being put into the development of a graphic procedure interface, which will enable EMME/2 to generate graphics more efficiently when running within one of the standard window systems or with a graphic display which is directly controlled by the computer hardware. The first implementations of "emtool", as this interface is called internally, are being tested now for the Sunview window system (on all Sun Workstations) and for the Environ V window interface (on Clipper based workstations of Intergraph). Versions for the X11 window system and for direct support of the new class of TIGA compatible hi-res PC graphic adapters are under development.
Another important development concerns plot titles and annotations. A new mechanism allows annotation files to contain conditional commands. The conditions can access information such as the current module and scenario number, the state of the menu switches, the options selected within the current module and more. Four new switches have been added to allow the standard plot titles to be suppressed and to select to automatically superimpose up to three different annotation files. These new features allow the user to redefine the plot titles (which use sometimes very general nomenclature) according to the specifics of his application. Also, this opens the possibility of defining annotation files which translate the standard plot titles into foreign languages. Currently, such annotation files containing translated plot titles have been set up for French and German. Since the logical structures of these files are identical, other language files can (and will) be created very easily.