Analyzing the impacts of the traveler information provision services and the speed limit control

Abstract

Recent studies have indicated that lower urban speed limits result in lower vehicular emissions. With the implementation of traveler information provision services, travelers with better information about a transport network may change their route choice behavior and this may affect the impacts of the speed limit control on vehicular emissions as well as congestion. With this consideration, in this paper, we studied the impacts of the traveler information provision services and the speed limit control on the vehicular emissions and congestion. We model the route choice behaviour of the equipped and unequipped travellers as following a mixed-Stochastic User Equilibrium (SUE) with elastic market penetration. This mixedequilibrium problem with elastic market penetration is modelled as a nonlinear complementary problem (NCP). Results indicate that both higher and lower speed limits, such as 110 and 50 km/hr, do not lead to lower vehicular emissions. It is largely dependent on the service charges of traveller information services. Additionally, the information quality has different effects on vehicular emissions and congestion with varied speed limits.