A Route Choice Model Study Based On Prospect Theory Under The Policy Of Congestion Charging

As the congestion phenomenon of urban traffic to become more and more serious, the policy of congestion charging as a good strategy to solve traffic congestion is coming into our life gradually. With the policy of congestion charging to be implemented step by step and the fuel prices rising everyday, traveler's route choice behavior, especially the private car travelers, must be affected by it. Travelers will consider traveling expenses besides traveling time in their route choice. To a great extent, travelers choose the best route that suits themself most according to their characters, traveling properties, their preference, their experience and so on. Because of this, this article analyzes the factors which influence traveler's route choice behavior, and define the generalized traveling cost, and eventually establish a route choice model based on prospect theory under the policy of congestion charging, based on previous route choice model which only consider traveling time. This model can react traveler's route choice behavior actually, also can provide powerful guidance for the research of traveler's route choice behavior after the policy of congestion charging carried out.This article takes the private car travelers as the research object. First, this article analyzes the factors which influence traveler's route choice behavior deeply, especially subjective factors and objective factors. Travelers are divided into high-income travelers and poor and middle-income travelers, and the factors which influence their different propertie travel are analyzed in detail. Then, this article analyzes the change of the factors which influence traveler's route choice behavior after the policy of congestion charging carried out. On that basis, this article defines the generalized traveling cost considering traveling time, traveling expenses, individual preference and so on, and sets the generalized traveling cost that the travelers expect to get as the reference point of the route choice model. Then, the difference between the value of the generalized traveling cost that the travelers expect to get and the value of the generalized traveling cost that the travelers perceived is used to get the value function and probability weighting function, which are used to get the prospect value of each alternative route finally. At the last, a practical example is used to test the suitability and effectiveness of the model that this article established. This example uses the road network and data of Wei Hai city, and then a realistic case analysis and calculation is used to study the effects of congestion charging policy to traveler's route choice behavior. Results and analysis of the calculation are followed by. It turned out that: compared to the result without congestion charging policy, high-income travelers change their routes in their shopping travel when they will be charged 3 yuan, and they also change their routes in their commuter travel when they will be charged 6 yuan. While to the poor and middle-income travelers, because they are much more sensitive to traveling expenses compared with high-income travelers, their route choices can be different with each other. Meanwhile, this article also takes user surplus maximization as the objective function to study the problem how to formulate the standard of congestion charging. It can provide powerful guidance for the problem how to formulate the optimal standard of congestion charging.