Drivers in urban environments constantly face the problem of congestion. As a geographic hindrance that is growing rapidly in both frequency and severity, congestion represents a major burden to drivers and transportation systems alike. At the same time, recent advancements in technology have given cartographers unprecedented access to high-quality, real-time traffic data that is readily employed in traffic maps from various sources. Previous research has demonstrated that providing drivers with relevant, time-based information reduces environmental uncertainty, yielding benefits to individuals as well as the transportation network as a whole. Unfortunately, many of the available traffic maps are variations of a single design approach which is replete with ambiguity that hinders the task of travel time estimation. This is largely due to the irregular segmentation of the transportation network used in conventional traffic map design. To address this issue, two prototype designs are proposed that present regular, fixed segmentation schemes. The first approach employs segments that have a fixed length of distance, removing the users' need to estimate incomplete distances along the route. The second approach represents travel time directly by fixing segment length to a unit of travel time. Results of a user-based experiment strongly favor the regularly-segmented approaches for the purpose of travel time estimation and suggest that conventional traffic map designs are not adequate for this task. Traffic maps utilizing the fixed-minute segmentation were greatly preferred by users and were associated with significant improvements in travel time estimation.
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