Investigating the learning effects of route guidance and traffic advisories on route choice behavior

This paper describes a study to investigate the effects of route guidance a nd traffic advisories on driver's route choice behavior. The study is a two -factor experiment with repeated measures on one factor where the between-s ubjects factor is the type of traveler information provided and the repeate d, within-subjects factor is trips made between a specified origin and dest ination. Participants were recruited and randomly assigned to one of four g roups: group 1 having only a basic map of the network; group 2 having acces s only to route guidance, group 3 having access to traffic advisory informa tion, and group 4 having access to both route guidance and traffic advisory information. Each participant completed 15 trips between a specified origi n-destination pair on a hypothetical network. The results of this study ind icate that there may be significant short-term advantages to providing in-v ehicle routing and navigation information to unfamiliar drivers. However, t he results also indicate that the format and amount of information provided may not be significant as the benefits to having route guidance diminish w hen drivers become more familiar with the travel network. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.