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Taking the same route every day? An empirical investigation of commuting route stability using personal electric vehicle trajectory data

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Abstract

Traffic congestion has caused great concern among policymakers in large cities around the world. In contrast with constantly increasing transport supply, individual-based active travel demand management (ATDM) has been proposed as a more efficient policy alternative for combating congestion. However, how individuals make routing choices during commuting in response to ATDM incentives is still largely unknown, given the lack of individual travel data. Using a desensitized one-week travel trajectory data set involving 5641 personal electric vehicles, we examine the major influencing factors of commuting route stability during working days and make suggestions on targeting the most responsive commuters. We first filter family-used vehicles by clustering vehicle usage patterns through employing the Gaussian mixture model and interpret drivers’ route choice behaviors during morning peak hours. To look for factors affecting route stability, we develop a generalized additive model and find that route stability is significantly associated with road network density of origins and destinations, departure time, travel duration, commuting distance, reliability of the expressway, and volatility of the congested sections by which the routes passed. The empirical results may contribute to the understanding of individual route choices, and help urban managers develop more refined ATDM policies to alleviate traffic congestion in the future.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71734004) and the Shanghai sailing project (No. 20YF1451700).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Key Laboratory of Road and Traffic Engineering, Ministry of Education, Tongji University, 4800 Cao’an Road, Shanghai, 201804, People’s Republic of China

    Jihao Deng, Lei Gao, Xiaohong Chen & Quan Yuan

  2. Urban Mobility Institute, Tongji University, 1239 Siping Road, Shanghai, 200092, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaohong Chen & Quan Yuan

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  1. Jihao Deng
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Contributions

The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: study conception and design: JD, LG, and QY ; data collection: JD; analysis and interpretation of results: JD, LG, and QY; draft manuscript preparation: JD, QY, and XC. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Quan Yuan.

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Deng, J., Gao, L., Chen, X. et al. Taking the same route every day? An empirical investigation of commuting route stability using personal electric vehicle trajectory data. Transportation (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-023-10377-1

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