Modeling travelers' route choice behavior is important in many contexts (e.g. intelligent transport systems and transportation planning) but presents several difficulties, like the large size of the choice set, and the structural correlation among alternatives. Various authors, including Cascetta et al. (1996), Ben-Akiva and Bierlaire (1999), Vovsha and Bekhor (1998)and Frejinger and Bierlaire (2006) have proposed several solutions to handle these difficulties. In this paper we present a route choice modeling approach with latent chosen routes which can be combined with the models proposed in the literature. A latent chosen route is such that an exact description is not available. Instead, travelers describe their choice in terms of a sequence of locations and cities that they have traversed, without the need to relate the actual network used by the analyst. On the one hand, this technique improves the quality of the responses provided by the interviewees. Indeed, providing an accurate description of chosen routes is difficult and subject to structural errors. On the other hand, it complicates the role of the analyst. Several possible origin-destination pairs and their associated set of routes are considered, generated by a choice set generation algorithm. Results of different route choice models based on 1200 observations from the survey conducted in Switzerland are presented. Forthe covering abstract see ITRD E135582.
Abstract