CAREER: Reliability as an Emergent Property of Transportation Networks

该学院早期职业发展(Career)计划奖项的目标是调查个人旅行行为(例如，路线选择、旅行计划和交通方式的选择)和与交通相关的组织决策(例如，投资和定价决策)如何影响旅行可靠性(准时到达目的地的百分比)。这项研究验证了这样一种假设，即个人或组织层面上的微小行为变化会导致旅行可靠性的显著变化。该理论解释了个人和组织实际上是如何做出与交通相关的决策的，他们认识到他们没有完美的信息或无限的计算能力。该研究的实证部分解决了交通科学文献中的一个空白，使用智能手机作为移动GPS传感器来收集出行行为数据。如果成功，该项目将提供决策支持工具，有助于改变交通系统的运营和规划实践。这些工具将使交通机构能够评估导致个人和组织行为变化的战略(例如，增加过境乘客、改善出行时间选择、更好的路线改道决策和更具成本效益的交通投资)，以缓解交通拥堵和提高旅行可靠性。从长远来看，一个更高效、更可靠的交通系统将刺激经济增长，提高生活质量，并支持应急响应。随着这项研究打破了行为科学和系统工程之间的传统学科界限，它也为一个新的研究方向奠定了基础，该研究的重点是基于实际如何做出选择来优化交通系统的性能，而不是应该如何做出选择。这个项目将让高中生、本科生和研究生参与各种研究任务。研究成果将通过K-12交通教育门户网站、开放访问的维基网站以及其他专业和社区推广努力广泛传播。

The objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award is to investigate how individual travel behavior (e.g., route choice, trip scheduling, and selection of transportation mode) and transportation-related organizational decision-making (e.g., investment and pricing decisions) impact travel reliability (percentage of on-time arrival at destination). This research tests the hypothesis that minor behavior changes at the individual or organizational level leads to significant changes in travel reliability. The theory explains how individuals and organizations actually make transportation-related decisions, recognizing that they do not have perfect information or unlimited computational capabilities. The empirical portion of the research addresses a gap in the transportation science literature by employing smart phones as mobile GPS sensors to collect travel behavior data.If successful, this project will provide decision-support tools that could help transform transportation systems operations and planning practices. These tools will enable transportation agencies to assess strategies that induce individual and organizational behavioral changes (e.g., increased transit ridership, improved trip departure time choice, better route diversion decisions, and more cost-effective transportation investments) that could mitigate traffic congestion and improve travel reliability. Over the long run, a more efficient and reliable transportation system will stimulate economic growth, enhance quality of life, and support emergency response. As this research breaks traditional disciplinary boundaries between the behavioral sciences and systems engineering, it also sets the stage for a new research direction that focuses on optimizing transportation system performance based on how choices are actually made, not how they should be made. This project will involve high school undergraduate, and graduate underrepresented students in various research tasks. Research findings will be broadly distributed through a K-12 Transportation Education Web Portal, an open-access Wiki site, and other professional and community outreach efforts.