ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the bottleneck model on the positive and normative effects of Advanced Traveller Information Systems (ATIS) on trip timing. The deterministic bottleneck model features one origin and one destination connected by a single route. In reality, travel conditions are rarely constant as the deterministic bottleneck model assumes, but stochastic. An ATIS provides to all drivers unbiased information about capacity and demand. Drivers, who are familiar with recurrent congestion and have no perception errors, make rational use of this information in choosing departure times to minimize their expected trip costs. Adding route choice also makes little difference to the benefits of tolling. This is because, unless differences in free-flow travel costs are large, total travel costs are reduced only slightly by shifting traffic from the stochastic user equilibrium route split to the stochastic system optimum route split.
