Mathieu Plourde - Route choice modeling applications in the city of Québec

Route choice modeling applications in the city of Québec

Wednesday 3 May 2017

Abstract:

Understanding the mechanism behind route choice appears crucial to urban planner and decisions makers. The derivation of the choice set considered by the individual is not straightforward as potential alternatives are almost infinite and the agent is oblivious to most of them. 

The theory of the approach experimented in this study is developed at EPFL by Evanthia Kazagli & Michel Bierlaire and the innovative part lies in the integration of a cognitive representation of the road network. It means the modeling of route as in their conceptual description given by commuters. Instead of looking at the operational decisions, i.e. link to link decision, the goal is to explain the strategic decisions using aggregated spatial cues or mental representation items (MRIs)

The following work presents an application in the city of Québec, Canada. An explanatory approach of the road network structure and the distribution of traffic flows along the main arterials allow the identification of road elements that could serve as MRIs. Using available GPS records from drivers, an operational route choice model integrating latent class in the population will be derived.