This paper examines the impact of objective route attributes on morning commuters' choice of primary commute route in the Atlanta metro area based on repeated choice observations. Data used in this paper were from the in-vehicle travel behavior data collected using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) technologies from 182 commuters during a ten-day period. This paper identified objective level route attributes that differentiate a commuter's primary commute route and the other alternative routes of the same driver that have been occasionally used. Research results of this study indicate that, compared to the alternative commute routes, the primary route usually has shorter travel time and distance, faster average speed, fewer number of idle stops and traffic signals, and higher freeway percentage. The research also indicates that GPS-based technology is a viable tool for route choice data collection though challenges exist on data mining and data processing of the large volume of high resolution data.
Abstract