Simulation Analyses of the Influence of Route and Travel Demand Properties on Traffic Assignment under the Travel Time Information

Abstract

In recent years, the solution of road-traffic problems made shift to policies of software side such as utilization of information and communication technology from policies of hardware side such as construction and improvement of roads under the severe finance situations in Japan. Lifestyles of people have been changing greatly by the progress of information technology, and users' needs for road-traffic have been diversified with increase of users through information terminals such as cellular phones or internet. An introduction of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) is expected the effect such as relaxation of traffic jams or shortening of travel time by provision of the detailed and the prior information. As one of the ITS policies, we can pick up the travel time information provision. The travel time information provision have been provided through radio or internet. Many studies have been done about these effect, but we considered that don't have a definite conclusion. We have to analyze the relationship between drivers' reaction behavior and the change of network performance after received information in order to provide the traffic information service that can accommodate to the various needs of users. In this study, we analyze the variations of route condition and formation process of drivers' perceived travel time in the case where travel behavior is repeated under the stochastic travel demand with and without the provision of travel time information, and we examine the influence of the provision of travel time information on travel behavior and network performance. For this purpose, we construct a simulation model of traffic assignment for a simple road network, and we consider the simulation results by changing the route property and the stochastic travel demand property.JEL classification: R15, R41