Paper
Minimum Perceivable Difference in Urban Railway Route Choice and its Effect on Demand Analysis
2004 Volume 7 Issue 2 Pages 002-009
Details
2004 Volume 7 Issue 2 Pages 002-009
This paper aims to measure the human threshold of travel behavior, namely minimum perceivable difference (MPD). We improve the MPD model originally proposed by Krishnan (1977) to measure the MPD for multi-alternative choice problem. By estimating the model of route choice behavior in the Tokyo Metropolitan urban railway network, we find that the MPD is around 76 seconds. Then, we discuss the impact of the MPD on the travel demand by applying the models to the railway project in Tokyo Metropolitan Area. We conclude that 1) MNL model may overestimate the demand when the difference of utility between alternatives is small, but its impact is quite small ; 2) MPD model tends to have a sensible parameter, but its impact is small as well.
