The effect of travel time information on day-to-day route choice behaviour: evidence from a real-world experiment

Abstract

Route choice behaviour in response to travel information receives increasing attention within travel behaviour research. This study contributes to the literature by generating insights into the effect of travel information on day-today route choice behaviour based on largely explorative analyses using route choice data obtained from a real-world experiment. As such, our study complements confirmatory stated preference and laboratory experiments. We find that the provision of travel information leads to a decline in switching propensity and a higher probability that the shortest route is chosen. Furthermore, we identified six behavioural profiles, varying from switch-averse to switch-prone. Travel time information seems to influence travellers' propensity to shift from one profile to another across different OD-pairs. Our results contribute to understanding of the effect of travel information on route choice behaviour, and as such help inform the design of effective information-based demand management measures.

Stated choices and simulated experiences: Differences in the value of travel time and reliability

“…RP data includes drivers' route choices in a real-world setting either by self-reported questionnaires and interviews (drivers complete a questionnaire regarding their past route choices), and/or GPS experiments or remote sensing (drivers are observed in real world traffic), making RP data either a subjective self-reported measurement or an objective observed measurement (Carrion & Levinson, 2012). There are many recent studies which examine route choice in an RP context (e.g., Djukic et al, 2016;Papinski et al, 2009;Ramos et al, 2012;Vacca et al, 2019;van Essen et al, 2019). One such study shows how mobile phone location data can be used to estimate meaningful VTT measures (Bwambale et al 2019a).…”

Bus passenger path choices after consulting ubiquitous real-time information

“…From transport planners and researchers' point of view, travel information is typically acknowledged as an effective travel demand management measure (Khattak et al, 1996;Polydoropoulou and Ben-Akiva, 1998;Abdel-Aty and Abdalla, 2004). Travel information impacts traveller choices with regard to mode, route and time adjustment (Mahmassani and Srinivasan, 2004;Lyons et al, 2007;Zhang et al, 2008;Frei and Gan, 2015;van Essen et al, 2016).…”

“…Car drivers are offered with more flexibility and options to make route choices compared to PT users. Since the introduction of travel information, a considerable number of studies on its impact has been dedicated to car drivers' route choice (such as Khattak et al, 1993;Emmerink et al, 1996;Abdel-Aty et al, 1997;Lotan, 1997;Wardman et al, 1997;Chen and Mahmassani, 1999;Hato et al, 1999;Srinivasan and Mahmassani, 2000;Dia, 2002;Chatterjee and Mcdonald, 2004;Mahmassani and Srinivasan, 2004;Tsirimpa et al, 2005;Buscema et al, 2009;Wang et al, 2009;Kattan et al, 2010;Lu et al, 2011;Tian et al, 2011;Ramos et al, 2012;Ben-Elia et al, 2013;Tseng et al, 2013;Ma et al, 2014;Venkatraman et al, 2014;Tsirimpa, 2015;van Essen et al, 2016). Existing literature on the impact of PT passenger information on path choice is still limited.…”

Towards decolonial human subjects in research on transport

“…This is not simply because psychological factors are integrated into a random utility maximisation framework in many transport studies (see Section 2.1). It is not even primarily because transport studies of behavioural learning tend to be limited to first-order learning 2 and thus concentrate on how individuals can allocate their (scarce) resources better, or at least adequately, to achieve the transport-related objectives they seek to realise (Horowitz, 1984;Arentze and Timmermans, 2003;Ben-Elia and Shiftan, 2010;Van Essen et al, 2019). In other words, studies of behavioural learning in activity/travel behaviour tend to adhere to codes of symbolic life that revolve around overcoming situations of scarcity in the trip-making or transport context under consideration.…”