The dynamics of user perception, decision making and route choice

Abstract

I am proud and very pleased to be able to present this thesis which concludes a period of six wonderful years. It was autumn 2008 when I realized that I needed a new challenge to complement my work at Imtech Traffic & Infra (Peek Traffic at that time). A full-time PhD position had never appealed to me, but I had heard about the possibility of a part-time position, which seemed ideal. Within months I had found the necessary contributions from the Centre for Transport Studies at the University of Twente and Imtech Traffic & Infra to make this thesis possible. Early 2009 I could start. In the first few years I was a PhD student in need of a research topic, one that matched the interest of Imtech Traffic & Infra, the Centre for Transport Studies and of course myself. I found it extremely difficult to converge until I attended a workshop on Travel Behaviour, Modelling and Optimization (as part of IEEE ITSC). It was here when I first met Prof. Hesham Rakha and Prof. Erel Avineri. Their presentations inspired me to explore the relation between user perception and choice behaviour, and ways to exploit perception bias and behavioural imperfections in favour of societal objectives. Advantageously, the search had helped me to learn about my strengths and weaknesses as a scientist and it had become clear to me that I had to focus on empirical research and conceptual and theoretical design. Fairly soon I had drafted various plans for data collection, ranging from internet surveys to face-to-face interviews to driving simulators. This was perhaps the period that I enjoyed most because it involved a lot of interaction with respondents, co-workers and students. Once the results became available and I presented them in papers and at conferences I entered a new phase of my research. The feedback I received made me realize that it required several more iterations to reach the necessary level of convergence, precision and definition. I am thankful for the mix of enthusiastic, constructive, critical feedback that I received as it helped me tremendously to shape my thoughts, progress and eventually highlight my contributions to the state-of-the-art.The combination of working as a researcher for Imtech Traffic & Infra and as a PhD at the University of Twente, in my experience, proved to be very successful. Both worlds can learn a lot from one another and I found it exciting to operate right in the middle, where theory and practice meet. Further, as an employee of Imtech Traffic & Infa I had access to people, data and tools which are normally not so easily available to a PhD student. Conversely, on multiple occasions, company projects could benefit from the knowledge which my research had generated. Although two part-time positions may seem very inefficient at first, I experienced that the forced breaks from research allowed my research findings to settle and reflect on decisions and obstacles before continuing. As a result, I scarcely felt that I lost time. Although all of this sounds great, it was not a walk in the park either. Two pa...