Study On The Impact Of Variable Expressway Tolls On Truck Travel Choice Behavior

Due to the great differences between passenger cars and trucks in vehicle dynamic performance,speed and occupied space,the increase of freight cars will significantly reduce the operating efficiency and driving safety of expressways,thus forming a periodic traffic congestion phenomenon.Moreover,the current measures of trucks restriction and fixed rate are not suitable for the development goal of "cost reduction and efficiency increase" of the transportation industry.In response to this phenomenon,the domestic and foreign scholars put forward the expressway traffic demand management control method with variable toll,which adjusts the traffic volume of the expressway and its parallel expressway and even the whole urban road network in different periods and different sections through economic leverage,effectively balancing the distribution of expressway traffic volume in time and space.At the same time,in order to meet the diversified demand of freight transportation,it is imperative to introduce the concept of variable toll system in China’s expressways with the help of congestion charging experience at home and abroad.In view of this,this paper studies the travel choice behavior of truck drivers under variable expressway toll.A total of 584 valid paper questionnaires and electronic questionnaires were collected through SP questionnaire survey.Based on the preliminary statistical analysis of the factors such as personal attributes,vehicle-cargo attributes,time and economic attributes,and situational choice behavior of the sample,the crossdistribution relationship between various factors was explored.The study shows that the probability of drivers changing their travel choice behavior has a positive effect on the importance of tolls and bearing traffic costs,and a negative effect on the urgency of transportation time,and the influence degree of each attribute on the travel choice behavior of trucks is described.Based on the questionnaire survey data,by introducing the latent class model and combining with the characteristics of explicit variables,the truck drivers are divided into three categories to study the preference heterogeneity of travel choice behavior of truck drivers in different categories.This result shows that the toll has a significant impact on the classification of truck drivers.Along with toll increases,the probability of truck drivers belonging to Category 1(cost-sensitive and flexible drivers)increases,the probability of truck drivers belonging to Category 3(efficiency-priority and loyalty drivers)decreases,and the probability of truck drivers belonging to Category 2(costsensitive and helpless drivers)changes slightly.Through the horizontal comparison and analysis of the travel characteristics of different categories of truck drivers,it is found that the three categories of truck drivers have obvious differences in payment methods,selection factors and situational selection behaviors.Based on the classification results of the latent class model,in the case of only reducing the low peak period tolls and only increasing the peak period tolls,the binary Logit models and the two NL models with path selection in upper and lower layers are constructed respectively under three categories,and the applicability of the proposed model is verified by the 24-hour truck traffic volume in the southeast section of Chongqing Ring Expressway.The results show that the truck drivers of category 1 pay more attention to the change of toll,and the longer the transportation distance,the more inclined to change the departure time.Due to the urgency of freight transportation time,the truck drivers of Category 2 will give priority to switching to parallel roads when the toll rate increases,even though they are sensitive to tolls.The truck drivers in Category 3pay more attention to transport efficiency,and the change of toll has little influence on their travel choice behavior,and they are more inclined to choose the expressway in peak period according to the original plan.The results of the study have certain reference significance for the adjustment of expressway toll rate,the formulation of toll mode,the implementation of variable toll policy,and the operation management of expressway toll system.