Transport simulations: Knowledge levels and system outcomes

How does knowledge about a traffic system influence the behavior of people and the state of the traffic system they are acting in? The individual perception of the current traffic situation exerts an essential influence on the decision-making of road users and—in return—their behavior effects the state of the traffic system. The key element of modeling traffic systems is to understand the impact of different personal knowledge levels regarding the local and global state of road traffic. To evaluate this relationship, models of different levels of knowledge are constructed and implemented with the simulation toolkit MATSim. Simulations based on a real world scenario show the relation between the mean travel time and the road user’s amount of knowledge about the network structure as well as the amount of information about the loading of the links. A key result is that all drivers (statistically) benefit, even if only the half of them re-plan their routes according to current traffic information.

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