Influencing Long-Term Route Choice by Traffic Control Measures - a Model Study

Currently used traffic control measures, such as traffic signals, variable speed limits, ramp metering installations etc., are often not designed to influence the route choice of drivers. However, traffic control measures do influence the travel times that are experienced in the network. Since route choice is, at least for a part, based on experienced travel times, the control measures thus also influence the long-term route choice. This influence can be seen as a side-effect of the control measures, but in this paper we will investigate the possibilities to explicitly and actively use the influence of the traffic control measures to change the long-term route choice. Using basic traffic flow and route choice models we investigate how outflow and speed limit control can affect the final equilibrium turning fractions. As an example we consider a case study for a simple network with two routes and use a simple linear outflow controller, which makes the analytical investigation of the effects of the controller possible, but the results can be extended to more sophisticated control methods.