With the availability of systems that supply traffic information, drivers get the opportunity to improve their travel conditions. By the acquisition of information a driver can reduce his uncertainty about travel times in a network which can lead to the choice of subjectively less costly routes or departure times. In the decision whether or not to acquire the services of a driver information system, the traveller has to make a trade-off between the costs of acquisition (money, effort, time or the like) and the expected travel gains from the reduced uncertainty about network conditions. The paper analyses this acquisition decision in the context of pre-trip route choice and proposes a modelling approach with which the fraction of information acquiring travellers can be estimated. This fraction is an important variable in determining the effects of information provision to travellers upon trip and network performance quality. The proposed approach consists of updating a prior probability distribution of subjective travel times (Bayesian belief) into a posterior distribution when using information. (A)
Abstract