Route choice behaviour and travel information in a congested network

Abstract

Travel information has the potential to influence travellers choices, in order to steer travellers to less congested routes and alleviate congestion. This paper investigates, on the one hand, how travel information affects route choice behaviour, and on the other hand, the impact of the travel time representation on the interpretation of parameter estimates and prediction accuracy. To this end, we estimate recursive models using data from an innovative data collection effort consisting of route choice observation data from GPS trackers, travel diaries and link travel times on the overall network. Though such combined data sets exist, these have not yet been used to investigate route choice behaviour. A dynamic network in which travel times change over time has been used for the estimation of both recursive logit and nested models. Prediction and estimation results are compared to those obtained for a static network. The interpretation of parameter estimates and prediction accuracy differ substantially between dynamic and static networks as well as between models with correlated and uncorrelated utilities. Contrary to the static results, for the dynamic, where travel times are modelled more accurately, travel information does not have a significant impact on route choice behaviour. However, having travel information increases the travel comfort, as interviews with participants have shown.