4.6 Article

Do People Use the Shortest Path? An Empirical Test of Wardrop's First Principle

Journal

PLOS ONE
Volume 10, Issue 8, Pages -

Publisher

PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0134322

Keywords

-

Funding

  1. National Science Foundation [0825768]
  2. Minnesota Department of Transportation project Traffic Flow and Road User Impacts of the Collapse of the I-35W Bridge over the Mississippi River
  3. Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium for the project Value of Reliability
  4. University of Minnesota Metropolitan Consortium
  5. Directorate For Engineering
  6. Div Of Civil, Mechanical, & Manufact Inn [0825768] Funding Source: National Science Foundation

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Most recent route choice models, following either the random utility maximization or rule-based paradigm, require explicit enumeration of feasible routes. The quality of model estimation and prediction is sensitive to the appropriateness of the consideration set. However, few empirical studies of revealed route characteristics have been reported in the literature. This study evaluates the widely applied shortest path assumption by evaluating routes followed by residents of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. Accurate Global Positioning System (GPS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) data were employed to reveal routes people used over an eight to thirteen week period. Most people did not choose the shortest path. Using three weeks of that data, we find that current route choice set generation algorithms do not reveal the majority of paths that individuals took. Findings from this study may guide future efforts in building better route choice models.

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