Travel Behavior Analysis And Optimization Of A Commute Corridor With Staggered Work Hours

With the speedup of urbanization and the dramatic development of economic, traffic jam has become a serious problem for city sustainable development. As one of the effective measures of traffic demand management, staggered work hour scheme can adjust the distribution of traffic demand in time and space, and hence can effectively alleviate traffic jam. This thesis provides a comprehensive analysis on travel behavior and develops optimal staggered work hour schemes in a commute corridor with single bottleneck from the view point of traffic managers.In this thesis, an activity-based approach is firstly adopted to analyze commuters’ travel behavior in a single bottleneck commute corridor with single work start time. According to commuters’travel behavior analysis, the thesis derives the optimal of work start time. It is assumed that the commuters choose their departure time to maximize their own total trip utility. Under the user equilibrium condition, all commuters have the same and maximum trip utility. Using this equilibrium condition, the equilibrium departure rates and the critical time instants are analytically derived. Based on these theoretical result, we obtain the optimal work start time, which can maximize total system trip utilities. The optimal time varying toll scheme is also developed to eliminate queues behind the bottleneck. After implementation of this toll scheme, the trip utilities of all commuters are not changed.The thesis further analyzes commuters’departure time choice behavior in a single bottleneck commute corridor with double work start times. According to commuters’ travel behavior analysis, the optimal travel pattern and optimal work start times are derived. Compared with the case of single work start time, commuters’travel patterns with respect to the case of double work start times are more complicated. Analytical results show that there are four possible travel patterns for the bottleneck model with double work start times. After comprehensive analyses on the travel behavior, the equilibrium departure rates and the critical time instants are analytically derived for each travel pattern. By comparison, we find out the optimal travel pattern, and derive the optimal work start times under the optimal travel pattern, which can maximize total system trip utilities. Finally, the results of the case of double work start times are extended to investigate the case of multiple work start times. The travel behavior under the optimal travel pattern is comprehensively analyzed, and the analytical solution of the optimal work start times is also derived for the case of multiple work start times.