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a b s t r a c tChoosing a route is a complex task, especially since the roads' capacities are limited and road users non-cooperatively seek to optimize their own trip. This article present the results of three in-laboratory route choice experiments. In all experiments the participants had to choose repeatedly between a high-capacity toll-road and a toll-free main road. We investigate the role of pre-trip information on the resulting route usage dynamics. Besides the absence of a stable equilibrium point (Wardrop's User Equilibrium), we found that the participants improve their decisions over the course of time as a result of learning. Additional information appears only useful if only a limited number of participants possess such information. Moreover, we found gender-related differences in the observed road usage patterns: female participants were more likely to choose the toll road than male participants.

Abstract. We study the spatiotemporal patterns resulting from different boundary conditions for a microscopic traffic model and contrast them with empirical results. By evaluating the time series of local measurements, the local traffic states are assigned to the different traffic phases of Kerner's three-phase traffic theory. For this classification we use the rule-based FOTO-method, which provides 'hard' rules for this assignment. Using this approach, our analysis shows that the model is indeed able to reproduce three qualitatively different traffic phases: free flow (F), synchronized traffic (S), and wide moving jams (J). In addition, we investigate the likelihood of transitions between the three traffic phases. We show that a transition from free flow (F) to a wide moving jam (J) often involves an intermediate transition; first from free flow F to synchronized flow S and then from synchronized flow to a wide moving jam. This is supported by the fact that the so-called F→S transition (from free flow to synchronized traffic) is much more likely than a direct F→J transition.The model under consideration has a functional relationship between traffic flow and traffic density. The fundamental hypothesis of the three-phase traffic theory, however, postulates that the steady states of synchronized flow occupy a two-dimensional region in the flow-density plane. Due to the obvious discrepancy between the model investigated here and the postulate of the three-phase traffic theory, the good agreement that we found could not be expected. For a more detailed analysis, we also studied vehicle dynamics at a microscopic level and provide a comparison of real detector data with simulated data of the identical highway segment.

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