Weighting Waiting: Evaluating the Perception of In-Vehicle Travel Time Under Moving and Stopped Conditions

This paper describes experiments comparing traditional computer administered stated preference with virtual experience stated preference to ascertain how people value stopped delay compared with stop-and- go or freeflow traffic. The virtual experience stated preference experiments were conducted using a wrap around driving simulator. The two methods produced two different results, with the traditional computer assisted stated preference suggesting that ramp delay is 1.6 Ð 1.7 times more onerous than freeway time, while the driving simulator based virtual experience stated preference suggested that freeway delay is more onerous than ramp delay. Several reasons are hypothesized to explain the differences, including recency, simultaneous versus sequential comparison, awareness of public opinion, the intensity of the stop-and-go traffic, and the fact that driving in the real-world is a goal directed activity. However without further research, which, if any, of these will eventually prove to be the reason is unclear. What is clear is that a comparison of the computer administered stated preference with virtual experience stated preference produces different results, even though both procedures strive to find the same answers in nominally identical sets of conditions. Because people experience the world subjectively, and make decisions based on those subjective experiences, future research should be aimed at better understanding the differences between these subjective methodologies.transportation, travel behavior, driving simulator, ramp meters

Use of discrete choice to obtain urban freight evaluation data

The ex-ante evaluation of urban freight solutions is a complex task, due to the interference of different stakeholder groups with different views and objectives. The multi-actor multi-criteria methods have developed as a response to this scenario, but the determination of the weights required by them remains an unclear and controversial task. We propose the use of discrete choice methods as a powerful tool to confront these multi-faced evaluation problems, since the resulting surveys are flexible and easy to respond, and do not give away the final quantitative results. We have applied this methodology to the selection of urban freight solutions in the city of Seville, in Spain, followed by the determination of the relative weights associated to different objectives, both analyses carried out from the side of the carriers stakeholder group.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TEC2013-47286-C3-3-