Navigational Preference and Driver Acceptance of Advanced Traveler Information Systems

Author(s):  
Kathryn Wochinger ◽  
Deborah Boehm-Davis
Author(s):  
John L. Campbell ◽  
Cher Carney ◽  
Barry H. Kantowitz

Past research has established that human factors guidelines following traditional formats for presenting information are not useful and are often ignored by designers. Within the human factors community, there is considerable uncertainty and concern regarding the nature and utility of human factors handbooks and guidelines materials. Indeed, many existing human factors reference materials have been criticized by designers for being “too wordy”, “too general,” and “too hard to understand.” The development of clear, relevant, and useful human factors guidelines requires a judicious mix of science and art to overcome such criticisms. This paper describes an on going effort to develop clear, relevant, and easy-to-use guidelines for the design of Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS) and Commercial Vehicle Operations (CVO). It focuses on the methods and results of a user requirements analysis conducted to identify the appropriate content, organization, and format of the ATIS/CVO guidelines.


Author(s):  
Asad Khattak ◽  
Amalia Polydoropoulou ◽  
Moshe Ben-Akiva

Advanced traveler information systems (ATISs) offer benefits to travelers and may improve transportation system performance in congested areas. An understanding of how information affects travelers' decisions can help in evaluating benefits and designing demand management strategies. The objective of the present study was to explore how people deal with unexpected congestion during the pretrip stage and how they might respond to ATISs. Travelers' routes, departure times, and mode selection decisions were investigated through a survey of Bay Area automobile commuters. The effects of various factors such as sources of congestion information (radio traffic reports versus observation), trip characteristics, and route attributes on travelers' responses to unexpected congestion were examined. The pretrip response to future ATIS technologies was explored through stated preferences (hypothetical scenarios). A combined reported preference and stated preference model of traveler response was developed by using the multinomial logit formulation. The estimations indicate that travel time and information are important determinants of changes in travel decisions in response to unexpected delays. The model indicates a strong relationship between reported and stated preferences. The results indicate that ATISs overcome behavioral inertia and that individuals are more likely to change their travel patterns in response to prescriptive information. More specific findings and their implications for ATIS design are also discussed.


Author(s):  
Ramachandran Balakrishna ◽  
Haris N. Koutsopoulos ◽  
Moshe Ben-Akiva ◽  
Bruno M. Fernandez Ruiz ◽  
Manish Mehta

Traveler information has the potential to reduce travel times and improve their reliability. Studies have verified that driver overreaction from the dissemination of information can be eliminated through prediction-based route guidance that uses short-term forecasts of network state. Critical off-line tests of advanced dynamic traffic assignment–based prediction systems have been limited, since the system being evaluated has also been used as the test bed. This paper outlines a detailed simulation-based laboratory for the objective and independent evaluation of advanced traveler information systems, a laboratory with the flexibility to analyze the impacts of various design parameters and modeling errors on the quality of the generated guidance. MITSIMLab, a system for the evaluation of advanced traffic management systems, is integrated with Dynamic Network Assignment for the Management of Information to Travelers (DynaMIT), a simulation-based decision support system designed to generate prediction-based route guidance. Evaluation criteria and requirements for the closed-loop integration of MITSIMLab and DynaMIT are discussed. Detailed case studies demonstrating the evaluation methodology and sensitivity of DynaMIT's guidance are presented.


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