The economics of trip scheduling, travel time variability and traffic information

Understanding travel decisions at the level of the individual traveler facilitates more precise predictions of travelers' responses to trans- port policies, and thus more accurate policy appraisals. This thesis investigates how commuters choose their schedules in the face of recurrent and non-recurrent congestion. Data from a real-life peak avoidance experiment and a hypothetical choice experiment are used to derive the monetary valuations of travel time and trip timing aspects, distinguishing between short-run departure time choices and long-run travel routine choices. The thesis emphasizes the role of traffic information in quantifying the extent of travel time variability, in deriving the monetary valuations, and in the determination of optimal (road) pricing schemes.