Introduction

As discussed in Chap. 2, transportation simulation packages consist of many modules. So far, we have seen the traffic simulation and the visualizer. The next module will be the router.

In contrast to the visualizer, our router will operate on a graph similar to the traffic simulation. This means that it makes sense to re-use some of the traffic simulation code. There are several options:

• If your are working as part of a team and your task is the router, then you can just delete the pieces of code that are specific to the traffic simulation (example: the cell structure of the links) and go from there.

• If you want one consistent piece of code but not many hassles in terms of software design, then one option is to have the functionality for the simulation and for the router combined in the same software. A link for example would keep the cell structure, even when used by the router.

  This is quite inefficient both in terms of performance and in terms of memory usage, but our experience is that for the examples discussed in this text this is a workable solution. In this case, you do not need to read this chapter.

• It is possible to separate the general purpose pieces of the network reading and network construction from the simulation specific pieces.

It is the last point that will be discussed in this chapter.