Study About The Influence Of Travel Time Information On Perceived Travel Time And Route Choice Decision

With the rapid development of economy and the increase of car-ownership, residents’ daily travel demand has been increasing sharply. Supply of transportation system cannot meet the rapid increase of travel demand, which will deteriorate traffic conditions. Through providing travelers with traveler information, Advanced Traveler Information System (ATIS) assists travelers to make travel decision in the more and more convenient while complicated transportation system, consequently improve residents’ travel experience and the efficiency of the whole transportation system. So, it is necessary to investigate how travelers response and behave under the influence of ATIS. From getting traveler information to making a travel decision finally, travelers may go through the processes of information perception, information cognition and decision making. Analysis regarding these processes could help us understand travelers’ behaviors better.Starting with a review of the content and category of traffic information, this paper summarizes the influences of traffic information on different aspects of traveler choice decisions including departure time, travel mode, destination and route choices. Focusing on travel time information, a more specific review is did regarding to its influence on departure time and route choices. On the basis of these, research scope is defined. Then a Stated Preference (SP) survey was conducted among residents of Dalian and the data collected was used to calibrate Binary Logit Model. With the results, three topics are discussed:(1) performances of utility functions calibrated with observed values and the ones with travelers’ perceived values;(2) difference of travelers’behaviors with and without the influences of travel time information;(3) analysis of information perception characters of traveler group with different social-economic attributes.The results got from the sample indicate that (1) functions calibrated with travelers’ perceived values could describe travelers’ route choice behavior better;(2) travelers behave differently with and without the presence of travel time information and prove that traveler information does influence their travel decision, and (3) travelers with different gender, age, driving years and income show different concerns on several information source. The results of this paper improve our understanding about the general rale of travelers’ behavior under the influence of ATIS and could help policy makers to improve ATIS services and provide personal customized traveler information service.