Understanding Travelers' Route Choice Behavior Under Uncertainty

Understanding Travelers' Route Choice Behavior Under Uncertainty
Author: Nikhil Sikka
Publisher:
Total Pages: 150
Release: 2012
Genre: Automobile drivers
ISBN:

The overall goal of this research is to measure drivers' attitudes towards uncertain and unreliable routes. The route choice modeling is done within the discrete choice modeling framework and involved use of stated preference data. The first set of analysis elicits travelers' attitudes towards unreliable routes. The results of the analysis provide useful information in relation to how commuters value the occurrence/chances of experiencing delay days on their routes. The frequency of days with unexpected delays also measures the travel time reliability in a way that is easy to understand by day-to-day commuters. As such, behaviorally more realistic values are obtained from this analysis in order to capture travelers' attitudes towards reliability. Then, we model attitudes toward travel time uncertainty using non-expected utility theories within the random utility framework. Unlike previous studies that only include risk attitudes, we incorporate attitudes toward ambiguity too, where drivers are assumed to have imperfect knowledge of travel times. To this end, we formulated non-linear logit models capable of embedding probability weighting, and risk/ambiguity attitudes. A more realistic willingness to pay structure is then derived which takes into account travel time uncertainty and behavioral attitudes. Finally, we present a conceptual framework to use a descriptive utility theory, i.e. cumulative prospect theory in forecasting the demand for a variable tolled lane. We have highlighted the issues that arise when a prescriptive model of behavior is applied to forecast demand for a tolled lane.

Route Choice with Real-Time Information

Route Choice with Real-Time Information
Author: Eran Ben-Elia
Publisher: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2011-03
Genre:
ISBN: 9783844312553

In recent years information systems are being designed to assist people to make more efficient travel choices under conditions of growing uncertainty. Although travel demand modelers have analyzed the response to real-time information, usually this has been done under the questionable assumptions of rational decision-making. In reality, people can make completely different choices when their decisions are based on information or on experience. Improving behavioral assumptions could well increase the realism of transport demand models. This book describes an experimental approach to study route choice with real-time information. It provides both researchers and practitioners with valuable knowledge on the roles of information and learning in travel behavior and how statistics and state-of-the art discrete choice models can be applied to analyze and model travel behavior in risky and uncertain environments. This book will be especially useful to transportation policy makers and analysts, researchers and students.

Value of Travel-time Reliability

Value of Travel-time Reliability
Author: Carlos Carrion-Madera
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2011
Genre: Route choice
ISBN:

Travel-time variability is a noteworthy factor in network performance. It measures the temporal uncertainty experienced by users in their movement between any two nodes in a network. The importance of the time variance depends on the penalties incurred by the users. In road networks, travelers consider the existence of this journey uncertainty in their selection of routes. This choice process takes into account travel-time variability and other characteristics of the travelers and the road network. In this complex behavioral response, a feasible decision is spawned based on not only the amalgamation of attributes, but also on the experience travelers incurred from previous situations. Over the past several years, the analysis of these behavioral responses (travelers' route choices) to fluctuations in travel-time variability has become a central topic in transportation research. These have generally been based on theoretical approaches built upon Wardropian equilibrium, or empirical formulations using Random Utility Theory. This report focuses on the travel behavior of commuters using Interstate 394 (I-394) and the swapping (bridge) choice behavior of commuters crossing the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. The inferences of this report are based on collected Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking data and accompanying surveys. Furthermore, it also employs two distinct approaches (estimation of Value of Reliability [VOR] and econometric modeling with travelers' intrapersonal data) in order to analyze the behavioral responses of two distinct sets of subjects in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul (Twin Cities) area.

Route Choice

Route Choice
Author: Piet H. L. Bovy
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 336
Release: 1990-08-31
Genre: Science
ISBN:

With the ever increasing number of opportunities, in every aspect of modem life, making choices becomes part of our daily routine. It is thus only natural that social scientists have started to study human choice behavior. Early efforts focused on modeling aggregate choice patterns of home buyers, shoppers, travelers, and others. Later studies, aiming to achieve more realistic results, have concentrated on simula ting disaggregate behavior. The most recent approach in choice research is the so-called Discrete Choice Modeling. It is a front-line area mainly in contemporary transportation, geography, and behavioral research. It focuses on individuals' decision-making processes regarding the choice of destinations, modes, departure times, and routes. Considerable research has been done on identifying and quantify ing the general rules governing the individuals' choice behavior, but to the best of our knowledge there is no single book that solely deals with route choice. The study of travelers' route choice in networks is primarily oriented towards gaining insight into their spatial choice behavior. How do people choose routes in a network, what do they know, what do they look for, which road characteristics playa role? On the basis of this information it is possible to design quantitative models aimed at predicting the use of routes dependent on the characteristics of the routes, those of the surrounding environment, and those of the travelers. In this way, traffic flows in the network can be calculated and the network performance can be evaluated.

Route Choice Modeling Using GPS Data

Route Choice Modeling Using GPS Data
Author: Nagendra S. Dhakar
Publisher:
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2012
Genre:
ISBN:

A positive sign on the path size attribute indicates that the route with less similarity with the alternatives is more likely to be chosen. Trips going to home are the least sensitive to the travel time and right turns than the other trips. Compared to home-based trips, non-home-based trips are less sensitive to intersections and time on local roads. On average, the expected overlaps (probabilistic routes) with the chosen route are similar to the deterministic overlaps (shortest time path). Also, there is a probability of about 50% that the predicted route will outperform the shortest time path. We envision this study as an important contribution towards the development of empirically rich route choice models. With increasing numbers of GPS surveys and benefits of using high-resolution roadway network, the availability of computationally efficient automatic procedures to generate the chosen routes and alternatives is critical. Further, the examination of route choice behavior in terms of travelers' demographics provides more insight into the route choice decisions.

Modeling and Modifying Day-to-day Travel Behaviors

Modeling and Modifying Day-to-day Travel Behaviors
Author: Yue Tang
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2017
Genre:
ISBN:

The increasing availability of individual-level longitudinal data provides the opportunity to better understand travelers'\ day-to-day learning process of their choice alternatives, which enables potentially more accurate predictions of choice patterns in a network with uncertainties. In this thesis, an instance-based learning (IBL) model for travel choice is developed within route-choice context, where on each day a traveler's decision depends on her entire choice history in the past. Learning in this model is based on the power law of forgetting and practice, which is shown to be capable of capturing various psychological effects embedded in travelers'\ day-to-day learning process, including the recency effect, hot stove effect and payoff variability effect. Estimation results based on empirical data show that the IBL model reveals higher sensitivity to perceived travel time and achieves better model fit compared to a baseline learning model. Cross-validation experiments suggest that the forecasting ability of the IBL model is consistently better than the baseline learning model. Despite the above-mentioned advantages of the IBL model, the common problem of missing initial observations in longitudinal data collection can lead to inconsistent estimates of perceived value of attributes in question, and thus inconsistent parameter estimates. In this thesis, the stated problem is addressed by treating the missing observations as latent variables. The proposed method is implemented in practice as maximum simulated likelihood (MSL) correction with two sampling methods in an instance-based learning model for travel choice, and the finite sample bias and efficiency of the estimators are investigated. Monte Carlo experimentation based on synthetic data shows that both the MSL with random sampling (MSLrs) and MSL with importance sampling (MSLis) are effective in correcting for the endogeneity problem in that the percent error and empirical coverage of the estimators are greatly improved after correction. The methods are applied to an experimental route-choice dataset to demonstrate their empirical application. Hausman-McFadden tests show that the estimators after correction are statistically equal to the estimators of the full dataset without missing observations, confirming that the proposed methods are practical and effective for addressing the stated problem. Apart from modeling travelers'\ day-to-day learning process for travel choice, day-to-day driving behavior intervention is also studied in this thesis. A study of Mitigation Techniques to Modify Driver Performance to Improve Fuel Economy, Reduce Emissions and Improve Safety was undertaken as part of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) Research Program. Major conclusions include: 1) Real-time feedback has a significant effect in reducing speeding and aggressive acceleration. 2) Training has a significant effect in reducing idling rate in the first month after training. 3) Combining training and feedback is expected to significantly improve fuel economy, reduce emissions and improve safety.