it depends on your problem status  that you want to model 

 for travel demand and assignment TransCAD the best choice

it depends on your problem status  that you want to model 

 for travel demand and assignment TransCAD the best choice

If you are looking for commercial software packages, there are only few and they all compete in the world market. They are:

- PTV VISUM from PTV Group, Germany (http://vision-traffic.ptvgroup.com/en-us/products/ptv-visum/)

- EMME by INRO, Canada (https://www.inrosoftware.com/en/products/emme/)

- CUBE Voyager by Citilabs, USA (http://www.citilabs.com/citilabs_products/cube-voyager/)

- TransCAD by Citilabs, USA (http://www.caliper.com/tcovu.htm)

Roughly speaking, all of them can do the job, at least at the level of someone who starts in the field, as you obviously do. All of them implement a set of modelling approaches, and all of them let the user combine and configure several models in the software. So it will be difficult for you to find "the best" by looking at the implemented traffic assignment method, for example.

There are differences in work-flow and handling, and some differences in approaches due to national planning culture. But in the meantime, all of the four products are used in many places in the world.

If you work in research, you should look at two things:

- what are the conditions for academic use the vendors offer

- what programming interfaces are available in the packages

Since the other two answers recommend TransCAD, let me add my personal recommendation, which is PTV VISUM.

Thank you so much Dr. Vortisch . I was looking for several tools to compare and make a research article about the key differences regarding their efficiency in forecasting travel demand. Your answer greatly helps. Thank you again.

I agree with answer of Vortisch

very useful software