Investigation of route choice behaviour in passenger transport Adam TOROK*, Ferenc MESZAROS* *Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary atorok@kgazd.bme.hu , fmeszaros@kgazd.bme.hu Abstract - The continually increasing population, the rising economic activity and the permanent race for the rise of economic prosperity, led us to the increase of motorisation. Transportation sector has an important role, because it is not only using the lacking fossil energy sources and polluting the environment, but because of our social and economic structure it is the sector that can hardly change because of the big social resistance. One of the substantial preconditions for the change into an environmental friendly, sustainable system is correct data provision to the regulator (quality and quantity as well). One way for reduction of transport related environmental pollution is to give right price signal to the users with internalisation of transport related external costs. In our article we tried to examine the route choice behaviour in Hungary focusing on toll roads. Our aim in this paper is to analyze the correlation of control possibilities of such econometric phenomena with mathematic tools. I. INTRODUCTION One of the most striking characteristics of the 20th century was the emergence of the automobile for passenger transportation. There are over 700 million of these vehicles in circulation today around the world, the great majority of them with Otto cycle engines running on gasoline. Automobiles are an integral part of everyday life of developed society. They shaped the whole transportation system of mankind and represent a very significant fraction of the GDP of many countries. As developing countries grow and expand, the number of automobiles in the world will increase [1]. The number of vehicles per capita is filling up in industrialized countries, but is much smaller in today’s developing countries. In China there are only 20 automobiles per 1000 people compared to 700 per 1000 people in the United States of America. In Hungary we had 300 passenger cars for 1000 people in 2006. The consumption of gasoline necessary to run these automobiles is roughly 20 million barrels of crude oil equivalent per day, one quarter of the world petroleum consumption from which it is produced and, unfortunately, petroleum is found in relatively few regions of the world. Exports and imports of this commodity are the most important items in international trade, and many countries are critically dependent on petroleum imports. The current mobility behaviour of population is in need of change towards a sustainable transportation system with better utilisation of alternatives. This leads to lower dependency on fossil fuels and reduced harmful emission. Our aim was to analyze the application of road toll measure and the control possibilities of travellers in route and transportation mode choice with elasticity calculations, furthermore to model the modal and route choice as human behaviour. II. SITUATION OF THEORETICAL INVESTIGATION Let us assume that there are two different routes (as a part of a graph) on the road network. One with high capacity and high service level offered (interurban expressway), another one with low capacity and low service level (trunk road crossing cities and towns) – see Fig. 1. Basic situation is that both routes are free of charge for the users. First we introduce a standard toll system (vignette system for example - taking into consideration on the wear and tear costs) on the road with high capacity and service level. Consumer responses to changes in mobility prices are often measured by elasticity. When the price of road transportation has been changed, the utility function of travellers consequently has been also changed. Higher transport prices affect demand for transport through two main channels. At first, consumers respond by changing their route and secondly, they change their mode of mobility. In our case those people who need to reach the destination in limited time period, has a higher value of (travel) time will pay the toll [2]. Those who want to reach the destination with small expenses will choose the road with lower capacity and lower service level, free from any tolls. Figure 1. Investigated area Budapest - Győr (source: www.googlemaps.com) In macroeconomical sense we modelled the decision about route choice. We tried to build up a model based on utility functions and analyze the results. Practical uses of supply and demand analysis often centre on the different variables that change equilibrium price and quantity, represented as shifts in the respective curves (Fig 2.). In the literature both affine and nonlinear approximations of the demand and supply curves are in use. The Authors of SAMI 2010 • 8th IEEE International Symposium on Applied Machine Intelligence and Informatics • January 28-30, 2010 • Herl'any, Slovakia – 125 – 978-1-4244-6423-4/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE