United States Department of Transportation
i
A comparison of mobility impacts on urban commuting between broadcast advisories and advanced traveler information services
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2004-02-01
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[PDF-624.62 KB]
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Edition:Final technical report
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Abstract:This report explores the effectiveness of relying on commercial radio as a source of traveler information, and presents an approach to quantify mobility benefits from radio traffic advisories. The study, conducted for the Washington, DC, metropolitan area, used an analytical technique called the Heuristic On-line Web-Linked Arrival Time Estimator (HOWLATE) to examine if radio advisories can have similar mobility benefits as a notification-based traveler information service offering personalized estimates of travel times. Traffic reports were recorded from a local radio station and manually coded to translate them to a suitable format for analysis. Results from the analysis of 37 weekdays consisting of 4410 advisories indicate that overall radio traffic advisories were less effective in improving traveler on-time reliability than a service offering route-specific travel time reports. In the experiment, the simulated commuter receiving regular, quantitative estimates of travel times on relevant roadways typically made more effective route and trip timing decisions than the simulated commuter who received comparatively incomplete, irregular and vague advisories on prevailing congestion conditions from broadcast traffic reports. In fact, the simulated commuter listening to radio advisories recorded similar on-time reliability performance to the simulated control subject, who ignores all forms of traveler information. During the afternoon peak period, when travel time variability is higher, the simulated radio listener recorded slightly better reliability performance than the simulated control subject. During other periods of the day, the on-time reliability performance of the simulated radio listener was worse than the simulated control subject.
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