The Effectiveness of Releasing Traffic Incident Information

Various traveler information systems are currently being developed in order to alleviate traffic congestion and enhance the performance of road networks through guiding the travel behavior. This paper models the effectiveness of releasing traffic incident information in a simple network with parallel routes and assumed linear travel cost functions. It is found that for some routes the total network cost saving is available through incident information release only when the route capacity and traffic condition decline to a certain level caused by the incident.