Day-to-day traffic dynamics: laboratory-like experiment on route choice and route switching in a simple network with limited feedback information

An experimental analysis of day-to-day route choice dynamics in a simple three-route network is described in this paper. A laboratory-like experiment involving thirty subjects was conducted over a 50-period time span. Participants acted noncooperatively and at each period received only feedback information on travel times of chosen routes. The results indicate that the day-to-day route choice process was characterized by a high degree of volatility, and that User Equilibrium, even though reached occasionally, did not persist as a steady state of the network. However, the detection of statistically significant trends underlying the evolution of network state descriptors suggests the possibility that equilibrium conditions might have been approached over an appropriately extended time horizon. Individual route switching frequency was found to be significantly correlated to average experienced travel time, while both variables did not exhibit any significant relationship to personal characteristics of participants. Finally, observations collected in the experiment were used to derive estimates of behavioral parameters of a deterministic process model of day-to-day route choice dynamics.