To Leave the Expressway or Not? Impact of Travel Time Information

Drivers' diversion decision behavior under expressway variable message signs that provide travel time of both an expressway route and a local street route is investigated. Both a conventional cross-sectional logit model and a mixed logit model are developed to model drivers' response. It is based on the data collected from a stated preference (SP) survey. The mixed logit model accounts for taste variations across individuals regarding certain alternative attributes (i.e. travel time and number of traffic lights) and correlations among repeated choices of the same respondent. Results show that travel time saving and driving experience serve as positive factors, while the number of traffic lights on the arterial road, expressway use frequency, being a mid-age driver and an employer-provided car driver serve as negative factors in diversion. The mixed logit model obviously outperforms the cross-sectional model in dealing with repeated choices regarding the goodness of fit criterion. The significance of standard deviations of random coefficients for travel time and number of traffic lights evidences the existence of taste variations across individuals. The findings of this study have implications for future efforts in driver behavior modeling and advanced traveler information system assessment.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AND20 User Information Systems.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Gan, Hongcheng
  • Ye, Xin
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC
  • Date: 2014-1-12 to 2014-1-16
• Date: 2014

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 12p
• Monograph Title: TRB 93rd Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Multinomial logits; Traffic diversion; Traffic signals; Travel behavior; Travel time; Variable message signs
• Geographic Terms: Shanghai (China)
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01518304
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 14-0806
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 17 2014 3:52PM