Travel Behavior

Travinfo Field Operational Test Evaluation Plan

Hall, Randolph
Yim, Y. B.
Khattak, Asad
Miller, Mark
Weissenberger, Stein
1995

TravInfo is a Field Operational Test (FOT) sponsored by the U.S. Federal Highway Administration. The goal of the project is to implement a centralized traveler information center to collect, integrate, and broadly disseminate timely and accurate traveler information in the San Francisco Bay Area. This evaluation plan describes the scope, methods, and procedures to measure the effectiveness of the project. The TravInfo evaluation will contain four evaluation elements: institutional, technology, traveler response, and network performance.

Traveler Response to Innovative Personalized Demand-Responsive Transit in the San Francisco Bay Area

Khattak, Asad J.
Yim, Youngbin
2003

Urban sprawl makes conventional transit less competitive and points to the need for more innovative and flexible demand-responsive transit systems in the future. To increase their efficiency, such systems can take advantage of the emerging advanced public transportation systems technologies, e.g., vehicle location and information systems. However, little is known about how consumers might respond to such systems and what they desire. This paper explores the demand for a consumer-oriented Personalized Demand Responsive Transit (PDRT) service in the San Francisco Bay Area. Such a system...

Transient Aerodynamics in Vehicle Interactions: Data Base Summary

Chen, A.L.
Hedrick, K.
Savas, O.
1998

The vehicles in a platoon will experience transient aerodynamic forces as vehicles leave and join the platoon at various locations. A platoon of scale vehicle models is placed in a wind tunnel and measurements are made of the transient forces and moments as one of the vehicles is moved into and out of the platoon. The results from the wind tunnel experiments will allow the computer vehicle control algorithms to better predict the transient aerodynamics the vehicles in the platoon will encounter during leaving and joining maneuvers.Since a lane change (either leaving or joining a platoon)...

AHSCAP Dynamic Traffic Assignment Program User’s Manual and Design Description

Hongola, Bruce
1996

This research seeks to provide an understanding of the capacity and throughput require- ments of an automated highway system(AHS) via development of a computer model that represents system capacity and demand, operational characteristics, and defined infras- tructure. To do that, a variety of scenarios representing traffic input to the system must be represented. Also, a variety of infrastructures representing different system configurations must be represented. This includes the locations of entrances and exits.Detailed vehicle-based simulations have been used to investigate AHS capacity...

Operations at Regional Traveler Information Centers: The Case of the TravInfo Field Operational Test - Final Results

Miller, Mark A.
Loukakos, Dimitri
2000

TravInfo is a regional traveler information system in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was a Field Operational Test (FOT) over a two-year period from September 1996 to September 1998 with funding from the Federal Highway Administration and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). TravInfo's goal was to broadly disseminate accurate, comprehensive, timely, and reliable information on traffic conditions and multi-modal travel options to the public in the Bay Area. Organizationally, it was structured around a collaborative partnership between and among public and private...

How the Reconstruction of I-880 Affected Travel Behavior

Dahlgren, Joy
2001

One of the concerns that people have about expanding highway capacity is that this will motivate more people to travel, so that the highway will soon become as congested as before. This is also a concern with automated vehicles, which would have the effect of increasing capacity. This so-called induced travel has been a subject of much debate and study in recent years. One of the problems confounding studies of this subject has been that capacity increases are generally motivated by recent or expected development, which generates increased travel and can even increase per capita travel if...

Short Term Freeway Traffic Flow Prediction Using Genetically-Optimized Time-Delay-Based Neural Networks

Abdulhai, Baher
Porwal, Himanshu
Recker, Will
1999

Proper prediction of traffic flow parameters is an essential component of any proactive traffic control system and one of the pillars of advanced management of dynamic traffic networks. In this paper, we present a new short term traffic flow prediction system based on an advanced Time Delay Neural Network (TDNN) model, the structure of which is optimized using a Genetic Algorithm (GA). After presentation of the model's development, its performance is validated using both simulated and real traffic flow data obtained from the California Testbed in Orange County, California. The model...

Validation of Daganzo's Behavioral Theory of Mult-Lane Traffic Flow: Interim Report

Banks, James
2002

This report documents results of work completed at San Diego State University during the first year of a research project intended to validate a behavioral traffic-flow theory recently proposed by Daganzo (1,2). Work on this project completed at the University of California at Berkeley will be documented in a separate interim report. In the idealized form developed so far, Daganzo’s theory assumes two types of drivers, aggressive (rabbits) and timid (slugs), and two lane groups, shoulder lanes and passing lanes. In free flow, rabbits travel faster than slugs and the two groups are...

Models Of Commuters' Information Use And Route Choice: Initial Results Based On A Southern California Commuter Route Choice Survey

Abdel-aty, Mohamed A.
Vaughn, Kenneth M.
Kitamura, Ryuichi
Jovanis, Paul P.
Mannering, Fred L.
1993

This paper presents a statistical analysis of commuters' route choice behavior and the influence of traffic information. The analysis is based on a 1992 computer-aided telephone interview survey of Los Angeles area morning commuters. The results underscore the important relationship between the use of traffic information and the propensity to change routes. In addition, important relationships are uncovered relating the influence that commuters' socioeconomic characteristics and the level of traffic congestion they face have on traffic information use and route- change frequency. The...

Investigation of Traveler Information and Related Travel Behavior in the San Francisco Bay Area

Khattak, Asad J.
Targa, Felipe
Yim, Youngbin
2003

Advanced Traveler Information Systems are becoming an integral part of urban transportation systems. This paper discusses issues related to how people access, acquire and use travel information. The perceived benefits and willingness to pay for dynamic information are discussed. Empirical evidence from a major field operational test is examined to answer questions about why, how and who uses travel information. Empirical evidence suggests that information helps travelers to switch routes and departure time. The potential for information benefits is perhaps higher in cases of unexpected...