USING STATED PREFERENCE DATA FOR STUDYING THE EFFECT OF ADVANCED TRAFFIC INFORMATION ON DRIVERS ROUTE CHOICE

This paper presents a statistical analysis of commuters' route choice including the effect of traffic information. The paper utilizes data c ollected from two stated preference survey techniques. Two route choic e models were estimated. The first model used five hypothetical binary choice sets collected in a computer-aided telephone interview. The ob jective of the model was to determine how travel time variation affect s route choice, and the potential interplay among travel time variatio n, traffic information acquisition and route choice. The second model used data collected in a mail survey from three binary route choice st ated preference scenarios customized according to each respondent's ac tual commute route and travel time. The objective of the model was to investigate the potential effect of advanced traveler information syst ems on route choice. The correlation among error components in repeate d measurement data was addressed in this paper with individual-specifi c random error components in a binary legit model with normal mixing d istribution. The results underscored the significance of traffic infor mation and the potential effect of advanced traveler information syste ms (ATIS) on route choice. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.