Travelers' Route Choice Behavior in Risky Networks

TRAVELERS’ ROUTE CHOICE BEHAVIOR IN RISKY NETWORKS SEPTEMBER 2013 HENGLIANG TIAN B.S., BEIJING UNIVERSITY OF POSTS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS M.S., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Song Gao The accurate modeling of travelers’ route choice decision making when faced with unreliable (risky) travel times is necessary for the assessment of policies aimed at improving travel time reliability. Two major objectives are studied in this thesis. The first objective is to evaluate the applicability of a process model to route choice under risk where the actual process of decision making is captured. Traditionally, we adopt “as-if” econometric models to predict people’s route choice decisions. The second objective is to investigate travelers’ capability to incorporate future real-time traffic information into their current route choice decision making. Two separate stated preference (SP) surveys were conducted for each objective. The first SP survey used an interactive map in a computer based test. The second SP survey used a full-scale high-fidelity driving simulator.