Route Choice Dynamics After a Link Restoration

Carrion and Levinson (2012a) studied the bridge choice behavior of commuters before and after a new bridge opened to the public. This bridge replaced the previously collapsed I-35W bridge in the metro area of Minneapolis-St. Paul. The original I-35W bridge collapsed on August 1st 2007, and the replacement bridge opened to the public on September 18th 2008. They collected Global Positioning System (GPS) data of travelers between the last weeks of August 2008, and the first weeks of December 2008. This data allowed to observe the traffic patterns of the travelers on the road network, and identify the possible reasons influencing the travelers' preferences towards the new I-35W bridge vs. other bridge alternatives. For this purpose, they formulated a static model based on statistical measures (e.g. mean, standard deviation) on day-to-day travel time distributions obtained by aggregating travel times of different days for the I-35W bridge, and for all the other alternatives. This study extends Carrion and Levinson (2012a) by considering explicitly the day-to-day behavior of travelers, and by also considering the previously excluded subjects that are transitioning between bridge alternatives not including the I-35W bridge. This is accomplished by specifying and estimating a duration model (i.e. a hazard model) on data of the subjects' morning commute. The primary results indicate that the subjects react to day-to-day travel times on a specific route according to thresholds. These thresholds help discriminate whether a travel time is within an acceptable margin or not, and travelers may decide to abandon the chosen route depending on the frequency of travel times within acceptable margins. The secondary results indicate that subjects' previous experience, and perception of the alternatives also influence their decision to abandon the chosen route.

  • Supplemental Notes:
    • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB10(2) Route Choice and Spatio-Temporal Behavior.
  • Corporate Authors:

    Transportation Research Board

    500 Fifth Street, NW
    Washington, DC  United States  20001
  • Authors:
    • Carrion, Carlos
    • Levinson, David M
  • Conference:
  • Date: 2013

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Media Type: Digital/other
  • Features: Figures; References; Tables;
  • Pagination: 23p
  • Monograph Title: TRB 92nd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01475709
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Report/Paper Numbers: 13-3483
  • Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
  • Created Date: Mar 15 2013 9:48AM