Analysis of route choice decisions by long-haul truck drivers

This study has done an empirical analysis of long-haul truck drivers' route choice decision making as they navigate the U.S. highway network. The most important factor that has been analyzed is how long-haul truck drivers trade off between distance and time when faced with multiple routes. From information gathered from a revealed preference data set consisting of about 250,000 trucks over a 13-day period, a logistic model was constructed to describe route choice behavior when truck drivers are faced with alternate routes. The logistic model predicted the percentage of trucks that used the bypass route as a function of the perceived speed on the downtown route. The results of this study show that time is a significant factor in the decision-making process.