Research On Valuation Of Travel Time Reliability For Transit Commuters

As a useful criterion, travel time reliability is becoming more andmore important for planning and management of urban traffic. Manyscholars, at home or abroad, have paid lots of attention on how travelersevaluate the valuation of travel time reliability and how the travel timereliability factors influence the travelers’ choice decisions. Research onthis problem is helpful for providing a quantitative method to analyze therelationship between reliability factors and travel behavior. Moreover thisresearch greatly supports the cost-benefit analysis of traffic projects andpolicies making for travel demand management strategies. This thesissystematically summarizes the research results on valuation of travel timereliability from both domestic and overseas, comprehensively analyzesvarious travel time reliability valuation models and different dataacquisition methods. This thesis provides an integrated solution forappropriately evaluating the travel time reliability. A SP questionnairesurvey program which based on preset information of respondents isproposed to investigate the characteristics of transit travelers’ valuation oftravel time reliability in the context of morning peak in Tianjin city. Directand indirect value methods are applied respectively and related parametersare determined by Mixed Logit model. The existence of valuation of traveltime reliability is verified. It also can be obtained that bus commuters notonly measured the reliability by travel time fluctuation itself but also paidmore attention on the delay cost of late arrival or opportunity cost of earlyarrival caused by the uncertainty. The results provide the distribution oftravelers’ willingness to pay for the travel time reliability and analyze the relation between reliability preference and different social economicalcharacteristics. Furthermore, the results are also helpful for calculating thebenefits of reliability improvement in transportation construction programand provide meaningful references for TDM policies making.