A Hierarchical Agent-Based Simulation for Modeling Traveler Behaviors

Understanding traveler behaviors is very important in studying the transportation system. Traveler behaviors can be divided into two parts: before a trip and within a trip. In this paper, the before trip behavior mainly refers to route choice and the within trip behavior includes tactical driving which may include free-flow driving, car following and lane changing. The route choice and the tactical driving behavior may change as time elapses due to the interactions between travelers as well as due to changes in the transportation network topology. This paper proposes a hierarchical agent-based simulation framework with route choice behavior on the upper level and tactical driving behavior on the lower level and includes travelers’ interactions with the transportation network. The route choice model considers learning from previous experiences, heterogeneity of different travelers, incomplete network information, and communications between travelers. The tactical driving model is mainly derived from the NGSIM program. This hierarchical framework is implemented in AnyLogic® software and tested with two simulation experiments. Results from numeric examples show that the proposed agent models reach the same equilibrium solutions as reported in classical models in the literature and how network topology changes can influence the traveler’s decision making. This agent based modeling paradigm opens the possibility to study and understand the complexity travelers’ decision making under a wide variety of scenarios.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB10 Traveler Behavior and Values.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Feng, Yiheng
  • Head, Larry
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2013-1-13 to 2013-1-17
• Date: 2013

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: 15p
• Monograph Title: TRB 92nd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Choice models; Decision making; Drivers; Route choice; Traffic models; Travel behavior
• Uncontrolled Terms: Agent based models
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; I71: Traffic Theory;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01477748
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 13-4169
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Apr 9 2013 12:46PM