ANALYTICAL TOOLS FOR ATIS (Strumenti analitici per applicazioni ATIS)

ATIS (Advanced Traveller Information Systems) are aimed to dispatch information on traffic conditions to travellers allowing them to keep their travel decisions with less uncertainty. Effects of ATIS can be analysed at a disaggregated level or at a network level. In the first case the impacts of ATIS on individual decisions are considered, in the second case it is considered how travellers’ decisions interact each other and with the congestion phenomenon, leading to actual traffic patterns. The investigation of the effects of information on travellers’ behaviours/choices at a disaggregated/individual level is the focus of this work, provided that it is a pre-requisite for any analysis of the impacts on traffic networks. One of the crucial points in ATIS is that travellers’ behaviour is expected to be influenced by the ability of the system in making accurate estimations of actual travel times. In particular, this work investigates the effect of the information accuracy on travellers’ compliance and proposes an original modelling framework able to explicitly estimate it. The study is carried out by means of an experimental environment based on a Stated Preference survey. The obtained results are very encouraging and allow for a deeper comprehension and simulation of travellers’ compliance with ATIS.