This thesis research focuses on the impact of traffic information on day-to-day route choice. The effects of both en-route information and ex-post information are studied. Special attention is given to three other important aspects in day-to-day route choice: learning from experience and information, habits and the effect of uncertainty / reliability. A large experiment was set up and a discrete choice model for panel data was estimated on the resulting data. Conclusions: The more elaborate traffic information that was provided, the higher the travel time savings that were realized; Traffic information increases the use of less reliable routes; Ex-post information influences especially travellers who do not receive en-route information; Traffic information helps travellers to learn about travel times. Whereas travellers who did not receive en-route traffic information based their expected travel time for a certain route mainly on the most recent experience, travellers with en-route information used more previous experiences; Travellers are very much driven by habit in their route choice. The role of past choices compared to the role of the expected travel time was found to be relatively large in the route choice process. (Author/publisher)
Abstract