Abstract
The adjustment of road toll is an important measure that can alleviate road traffic congestion by convincing car travelers to travel during off-peak times. In order to reduce congestion on the expressway on the first day of a holiday, factors that affect the departure times of holiday travelers must be comprehensively understood to determine the best strategy to persuade car travelers to avoid peak travel times. This paper takes holiday car travelers as the research object and explores the characteristics and rules of departure time choice behavior for different holiday lengths. Based on Utility Maximization Theory, a multinomial logit (MNL) model of departure time choice for a three-day short holiday and a seven-day long holiday was established. Model calibration and elastic analysis were carried out using Revealed Preference/Stated Preference (RP/SP) survey data. Additionally, the influence of the highway toll policy on departure times for long and short holidays was analyzed. The results show that the rate of first-day departures is much higher than that of other departure times for both short and long vacations under the current policy of free holiday passage on highways. Factors such as trip duration, size of the tourist group, the number of visits, travel range, travel time, monthly income, occupation, age and road toll have a significant influence on the departure time decisions of holiday car travelers, and the effect and degree of influence are markedly different for different holiday lengths. The effects of tolls for each departure time and different pricing scenarios on the choice behavior of travelers are different between long and short holidays. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the road toll policy also varies for travelers with different travel distances. This study can provide useful information for the guidance of holiday travelers, the management of holiday tolls on expressways and the formulation of holiday leave time.
Highlights
China’s statutory holidays have been adjusted several times to form a number of long and short consecutive holidays
In 2019, only 29 days of statutory holiday tourism accounted for 30% of the annual tourism market, and the number of domestic travelers amounted to 1.84 billion people, including 34.9% on short holidays and 65.1% on long holidays
This paper focuses on the problem of highway traffic congestion caused by the concentration of departure times on holidays
Summary
China’s statutory holidays have been adjusted several times to form a number of long and short consecutive holidays. With the improvement in people’s living standards and the implementation of the free passage policy for minibuses on the expressway during important public holidays, the tourism demand has become very high, and it is concentrated during holidays [3,4]. In 2019, only 29 days of statutory holiday tourism accounted for 30% of the annual tourism market, and the number of domestic travelers amounted to 1.84 billion people, including 34.9% on short holidays and 65.1% on long holidays (values are from the collation of network open data). Since the implementation of the holiday highway free policy in 2012, self-driving travel has been increasing every year, with an average annual growth rate of 21.09%. The total traffic volume on the highway has increased significantly, which has aggravated its congestion [2], increased air pollution by 20% and reduced visibility by 1 km [5]
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