BEHAVIOURAL SURVEY OF TRAVELLERS' REACTION TO INCIDENT INFORMATION ON URBAN EXPRESSWAY

Abstract

Traffic incidents such as traffic accidents sometimes bring severe congestion in urban expressway networks. The traffic information is often provided by VMS (Variable Message Sign) in order to help travellers' route choice behaviour, and mitigate the impacts of the incidents. The purpose of this study is to show travellers' route choice behaviour when traffic incident information is provided on the VMS in urban expressway networks. SP (Stated-preference) survey was conducted to observe travelers' behaviour when travellers get the incident information on the urban expressway. The ramp choice model is developed in order to clarify the reaction to the incident information. The results of the survey shows behavioural differences caused by the type of the indices of the degree of the incident congestion are quantitatively represented. The effects of tendency information of congestion and toll policy of urban expressway are also discussed.