San Francisco County Transportation Authority
Moving the City

The Authority is home to SF-CHAMP, the official travel forecasting tool for San Francisco. SF-CHAMP is a state-of-the-art, activity-based model that predicts future travel patterns for the city. This tool is used for many Authority planning studies and projects.

About the SF-CHAMP Model

The San Francisco Chained Activity Modeling Process (known as SF-CHAMP) is a computer-based tool that can be used to assess the impacts of land use, socioeconomic, and transportation system changes on the performance of the local transportation system. SF-CHAMP was developed to reflect San Francisco’s unique transportation system and socioeconomic and land use characteristics. It uses San Francisco residents’ observed travel patterns, detailed representations of San Francisco’s transportation system, population and employment characteristics, transit line boardings, roadway volumes, and the number of vehicles available to San Francisco households to produce measures relevant to transportation and land use planning. Using future year transportation, land use, and socioeconomic inputs, the model forecasts future travel demand.

The San Francisco Model incorporates a state of the art approach to forecasting travel demand. This activity-based model is more sensitive than traditional four-step models to a broader array of conditions that influence travelers’ choices. One of the fundamental differences between the San Francisco Model and traditional models is that it is tour-based not trip-based. A tour is a chain of trips made by an individual that begins and ends at home without any intermediate stops at home, whereas a trip is a single movement from an origin to a destination. As such, the model structure is more complex than the traditional four-step modeling approach. For more information please follow the links below.