Non-Simulation Zones#

A zone may be set as Non-Simulation by setting its area_type attribute to 98 in the zone table. After changing the area type in the zone table, geoconsistency has to be run to ensure that other geographic tables such as locations and links reflect the modified area types (see Editing and consistency).

Polaris will not load any trip that originate and end in Non-Simulation zones onto the network. Setting a zone as Non-Simulation is recommended if its roadway network is sparsely represented in the supply database (i.e., many lower-priority roads are missing) or if the traffic characteristics of the roadways in the zone is not of interest to the user. In practice, zones on the outskirts of the study area are often set as Non-Simulation. This approach helps avoid unrealistic traffic congestion caused by an incompletely modeled network within the zone.

The figure below shows the zones set as Non-Simulation in the DFW Polaris model.