The interplay between road infrastructure, traffic conditions and travel choices is in the core of any infrastructure initiative, traffic control strategy or policy change. While the traditional traffic analysis framework assumes full awareness of travel costs and relies on the definition of user equilibrium state, there are few studies in the literature that test the existence of such equilibrium state. This study evaluates the widely applied shortest path assumption and so user equilibrium state from two aspects; (i) user perspective: similarity between actual and shortest paths, (ii) network perspective: node loads that result from actual and shortest paths. This study uses the GPS trajectory data set of approximately 20,000 taxis from Shenzhen, China to estimate the travel costs and reveal the actual routes followed in the network. It also considers two types of shortest paths that are based on free flow and estimated travel time. User perspective analysis concludes that most travellers do not choose the shortest path based on neither free flow nor estimated travel time. On the other hand, network perspective examination demonstrates similar network-wide patterns with actual routes and shortest paths based on estimated travel time.
How far is traffic from user equilibrium?
2017-10-01
578088 byte
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
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