Comparing Alternative Route Planning Techniques: A Comparative User Study on Melbourne, Dhaka and Copenhagen Road Networks

TL;DR

This study compares user perceptions of alternative route quality generated by four popular navigation approaches across three global cities, revealing no significant differences in user ratings.

Contribution

It provides the first comparative user study on route quality across diverse urban road networks using multiple approaches, including a web-based demo system.

Findings

No significant difference in user ratings among the four approaches

User ratings varied with city and route context

Limitations suggest cautious interpretation of results

Abstract

Many modern navigation systems and map-based services do not only provide the fastest route from a source location s to a target location t but also provide a few alternative routes to the users as more options to choose from. Consequently, computing alternative paths has received significant research attention. However, it is unclear which of the existing approaches generates alternative routes of better quality because the quality of these alternatives is mostly subjective. Motivated by this, in this paper, we present a user study conducted on the road networks of Melbourne, Dhaka and Copenhagen that compares the quality (as perceived by the users) of the alternative routes generated by four of the most popular existing approaches including the routes provided by Google Maps. We also present a web-based demo system that can be accessed using any internet-enabled device and allows users to see the alternative routes generated by the four approaches for any pair of selected source and target. We report the average ratings received by the four approaches and our statistical analysis shows that there is no credible evidence that the four approaches receive different ratings on average. We also discuss the limitations of this user study and recommend the readers to interpret these results with caution because certain factors may have affected the participants' ratings.