Integrated Empirical Analysis of the Effect of Variable Message Sign on Driver Route Choice Behavior
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 146, Issue 2
Abstract
This paper investigated the effect of a variable message sign (VMS) on drivers’ route choice behavior through a questionnaire survey and field-observed route choice data. A logistic model was developed based on the questionnaire survey data to reveal the relationship between drivers’ route choice behavior and different attributes as well as traffic information displayed on the VMS. Then, field-collected data were employed to verify the modeling results. It was concluded that when VMS displayed “moderate traffic congestion,” a driver’s average number of daily driving trips and degree of attention to VMS affected their route choice decision. When VMS displayed “heavy traffic congestion,” the impact factors included gender, age, average number of daily driving trips, and degree of driver’s attention to VMS. Modeling results also showed that with the increase of age, the probability of route changing indicated a decreasing trend; drivers who always or occasionally paid attention to VMS preferred to change the original route. In addition, independence test results for field-collected data suggested that the traffic condition information displayed on VMS had significant impacts on drivers’ route choice behavior.
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Acknowledgments
This research was sponsored by the Key Research and Development Program of Yangzhou City, Grant No. YZ2018064. The authors thank the graduate students Xueqiang Huang and Xiaoliang Gong from Yangzhou University for their help with data collection and extraction.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 146 • Issue 2 • February 2020
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 30, 2019
Accepted: Jun 10, 2019
Published online: Nov 28, 2019
Published in print: Feb 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Apr 28, 2020
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