The scope of this study is to determine the new trends and approaches in transportation modeling and assist transportation professionals in reviewing features of alternative software packages, evaluating them, and comparing their capabilities. Information for selected packages has been collected through publicly available software information, scientific and industry publications and through direct communication with the developers and/or vendors. A survey has been conducted, to obtain the perspective of software package users and determine the strengths and limitations of various widely used packages. A VBbased application which facilitates the comparative evaluation of selected packages has been developed. The application may be used to review the features of any package considered in the analysis, compare several features of any two packages and determine interconnectivity between alternative packages. The outcome of this work may assist transportation experts in determining which software tools are the most appropriate ones for their particular applications and in selecting the tools that are needed to cover their modeling needs.