Experimental study of departure time choice behavior in commute problem with stochastic bottleneck capacity

One important feature of the transportation system is uncertainty. Based on Vickrey's bottleneck model, we conducted a laboratory experiment to study commute problem with stochastic capacity. The experimental results show that, for either player or departure time, the mean cost and the standard deviation of cost differ significantly, and the relationship between mean cost and standard deviation of cost can be approximately fitted linearly with a positive slope. Our experiment demonstrates that in the uncertain condition, the players seem to minimize their cost budget and they behave risk preference.