Is providing inaccurate pre-trip information better than providing no information in the morning commute under stochastic bottleneck capacity?

Abstract

One way to eliminate the negative impact of travel time uncertainty faced by commuters is to provide them with traffic information so that they can make informed travel. Nevertheless, the provided information may not be accurate, thereby affecting commuters’ choices as well as system efficiency. This paper investigates the welfare effects of inaccurate pre-trip information on commuters’ departure time choice under stochastic bottleneck capacity in the morning commute. Three cases concerning commuters’ actions in response to inaccurate pre-trip information, namely compliance, noncompliance, and co-existence, are studied. We consider two types of traffic conditions: good conditions and bad conditions, as well as errors in forecasting good conditions and bad conditions, respectively. We derive all theoretical solutions under different magnitudes of forecast errors, and frequency and severity of bottleneck capacity reductions in the compliance and noncompliance cases, and adopt an iterative algorithm to obtain the departure flow patterns in the co-existence case. Our results show that the benefits of inaccurate information depend on information quality, commuters’ response and heterogeneity, and the frequency and severity of bottleneck capacity reductions. A sensitivity analysis is carried out to further evaluate the benefit gains/losses under different situations in the three cases.