Diversion Strategies for Commercial Vehicle Using Real-Time and Future Traffic Information

Advances in communication, automatic vehicle location, and geographic information system technologies have made available several types of real-time information which benefits commercial vehicle operations. However, most routing decisions or diversion plans in research literature are based on the current traffic situation and little attention is paid to the future. Such kinds of greedy strategy consistently suggest en route diversion at any point where the alternative route choice is better than the ongoing one. Hence, in the constantly varying real world, excessive diversions may appear and are much likely to create a sort of `zigzag' effect, eventually leading to a higher cost. Thus, a forward-looking diversion strategy considering both real-time and future information is proposed. This paper evaluates the potential benefits, limitations and difficulties of several diversion strategies in response to different information under a real road network, and the selected results derived from simulation are described. The research will help logistics companies to assess the benefits of in-vehicle route-guidance system in their day-to-day operations.