Stochastic route choice models based on VMS information and hierarchy for urban transport network

This paper firstly establishes four variational inequalities for stochastic traffic assignment by quantifying information utility of Variable Message Signs (VMS) and hierarchy of transport network. When VMS systems are operated in the higher level of roads such as arterials, the attenuation factor of information utility is integrated with information quantity to define a new formulation of the impact coefficient of VMS on traffic flow, which appears in the definitions of link and path lengths, and allocation parameters. Furthermore, equivalent Variational Inequalities (VIs) of Logit models considering these elements are developed and proved. A case study was conducted using the VI models on a hierarchical road network. We get some practically meaningful results, for example, VMS information can improve hierarchical network performance by interacting with traffic flow in all models except the C-Logit model and hierarchical level can improve network performance. Among the results, the most important is that the C-Logit or path-size Logit will produce a flow pattern with less fluctuation of traffic densities among links and is less affected by stochastic factors than the multinomial Logit and cross-nested Logit in a stochastic hierarchical road network.