The effect of traffic applications on travel behaviour

Traffic information has been influenced the choice behavior of travelers while en route. The main goal of this study is to investigate the impact of real-time traffic information acquired through some traffic applications such as GPS navigation devices for car , mobile traffic applications and radio traffic reports on traveler behavior on highways. This study estimates binary logit mode choice model of the decision making for travel of people stayed at the civil engineering faculty of Istanbul Technical University. Commuter responses to traffic information were analysed seperately in two different commuters mode, including self-driving commute and public transit commute by using Binary Logit Model. The travel behaviour models developed in this study are based on a self deviced survey of travelers which was conducted for the civil engineering undergraduate – graduate students, academicians and supporting staff at Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, in 2016. The attributes that influence travelers' decision-making patterns can be broadly categorized into three groupswhich were socioeconomics, travel and technological characteristics. Moreover, travelers who obtain traffic information from some traffic applications were more likely to switch with respect their different characteristics. In addition, a variety of features of all traffic applications obtained from some related websites were also analysed. There are some difference regarding their significant variables and their descriptive statistic results between traffic applications that use in Turkey and in the world. In this study, each traffic application were also analysed and compare them in terms of their categorical attributes with the help of developing regression model. The purpose of this analysis is to investigate the index of the rating of the traffic applications used in Turkey and in the world. The analysis results assert that gender difference influence the interpretation of traffic applications and giving star rating in a different manner for different types of traffic applications. Unlike traffic applications used in Turkey, women use higher star rate than men for all traffic apps in order to evaluate those of traffic apps. In addition, males generally comment on traffic applications both as "accurate and reliable" when the traffic apps used in Turkey are mostly commented as "user friendly". Further outcomes were presented related to findings.