The Impact of Traffic Information Provision and Prevailing Policy on the Route Choice Behavior of Motorcycles Based on the Stated Preference Experiment: A Preliminary Study
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The study is interesting, but it would have been good to include more traffic modes and routes. These inputs limit the scope of study, as it cannot be generalised confidently. My other comments are given below.
The study includes motorcycles as the subject for the analysis of travel time and only two routes. However, the times taken using any of the routes are almost the same (8 to 10 minutes). Is this time difference significant enough to do the study? Moreover, motorcycles take advantage of their small size and usually do not follow lane behaviour in many countries (including developed ones; unsure about the author's country) and travel through the intravehicular gaps. Does this happen in the author's country? If it does, have the authors considered this? If this behaviour is taken into consideration, then the congestion would minimally affect motorcycles. Which limits the applicability of the study.
The study does not provide any additional knowledge or insight into the methodology. Several similar studies exist with several different modes and routes available.
Minor comment:
Figure 3 is repeated
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We would like to thank you for all the effort you put to improve the quality of our manuscript. We sincerely appreciate all the insightful comments and valuable suggestions provided.
Please kindly see the attachment to find our responses.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper's main claim is that traffic flow conditions, which are advertised through variable message signs (VMS), have a considerable impact on route choice, depending on the type of given information and how it is provided to drivers. The authors explain that a VMS-based broadcast is affordable whether the messages contain sufficient and explanatory variables. In this sense, the authors carried out an experiment consisting of surveying the stated preferences of motorcycle riders, presenting them with a variety of hypothetical situations. The gathered information was analyzed through logistic regression techniques, revealing such variables that contribute to changing the route selection and identifying the variables which may be considered harmless.
The sensitive point of the proposed study is the documentation of the statistical measures obtained by the testing of seven variations of a parametrized model for route choice behavior.
As suggested by the title, the current study contains preliminary results regarding determining the impact of traffic information provision. The presented results are based on the observations taken from a deployment with two routes to choose from, one consisting of an arterial road and a second consisting of a collector subsystem. For further studies, it would be interesting to investigate what happens in the choice process when non-homogeneous routes (combination/alternation of arterial-collector) are included as options.
The language of the paper is good, but slight edits might be needed for improved clarity, e.g. in equation (3), there is no explanation of variable TFC. The paragraph of lines 481-485 should be rewritten to improve its readability. Table 6 can be presented in a friendly manner.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We would like to thank you for all the effort you put to improve the quality of our manuscript. We sincerely appreciate all the insightful comments and valuable suggestions provided.
Please kindly see the attachment to find our responses.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This research paper was logically presented. The Introduction, purpose, problem, method, result and discussion was clearly presented. The paper was quite easy to follow and understand.
However, the authors did not elaborate on why they chose the binary logit model and mixed binary logit models. There no discussions similar models and their weaknesses which necessitated the choice binary logit model and mixed binary logit models.
A research paper is meant to add to existing body of knowledge. Although that has been accomplish in this paper, it should also be reflected in the methodology adopted.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We would like to thank you for all the effort you put to improve the quality of our manuscript. We sincerely appreciate all the insightful comments and valuable suggestions provided.
Please kindly see the attachment to find our responses.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper has improved after the revision and can be accepted.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you very much for your comments and approval. We really appreciate it.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
