The impact of route guidance, departure time, and alternative routes on door-to-door travel time reliability

Abstract

Conventional travel time reliability assessment has evolved from road segments to route level. However, a connection between origin and destination usually consists of multiple routes, thereby providing the option to choose. Having alternatives can compensate for deterioration of a single route, therefore this study assesses the reliability and quality of the aggregate of the route set of an OD-pair. This paper proposes two aggregation methods for analyzing the reliability of travel times on the origin-destination level: 1) an adapted Logsum method and 2) a route choice model. The first method analyses reliability from a network perspective and the second method is based on the reliability as perceived by a traveler choosing his route from the available alternatives. A case study using detailed data on actual travel times illustrates both methods and shows the impact of having variable departure times and the impact of information strategies on travel time reliability.