Car navigation with route information sharing for improvement of traffic efficiency

This research is intended to increase drivers' utility by reducing traffic congestion. To attain our purpose, we propose a simple route guidance mechanism based on route information sharing (RIS). Drivers using the RIS give planned route details to the route information server, which then sends accumulated traffic information based on those routes to drivers. Multiagent simulation in a lattice network and a radial and ring network confirmed that: i) as the drivers using the RIS increased, the travel time of both the drivers using the RIS and the other drivers decreased; ii) the travel times of drivers using the RIS were substantially shorter than those of drivers using other mechanisms.