Reducing time delays on congested road networks using social navigation

Social navigation provides drivers with an advice that aims to shift traffic flows in a network from a user equilibrium to a system optimum. The advice is based on minimizing a combination of the individual travel time and the marginal total travel time in the network. The level of altruism defines the extent to which a driver is willing to sacrifice his own travel time in favor of other drivers. Fuel consumption and CO2 emission are taking into account by converting them into time equivalent. Experimental results for a small network loosely representing the Bay area show that social navigation can reduce time delays by 10%. The reduction is positively correlated with network load, market penetration and level of altruism