Multi-agent Simulation on Day-to-Day Route Choice Behavior

The day-to-day route choice is a non-cooperative game process with many participants during a long time period. The multi-agent simulation system SeSAm is used to investigate two different route update rules designed for traffic information release and unrelease respectively. Simulation results on a small grid network show that the rule under information release can make route flow evolve to the logit-based stochastic user equilibrium faster than that under information unrelease. However, the flow pattern may be unstable if travelers put undue compliance on the released information. A stable flow pattern can also be achieved only relying on travelers´ perceived experience and learning ability, but the evolution is rather slow. It is thus suggested that the traffic information should be timely released to public meanwhile utilized properly.