A link based network route choice model with unrestricted choice set

•A model for the choice of route in network.•Link size attribute: a deterministic correction for correlation.•No choice set generation needed.•A dynamic specification of sequential link choices is equivalent to a static logit model.•Estimation on synthetic and real GPS data in network of 7000 links.

This paper considers the path choice problem, formulating and discussing an econometric random utility model for the choice of path in a network with no restriction on the choice set. Starting from a dynamic specification of link choices we show that it is equivalent to a static model of the multinomial logit form but with infinitely many alternatives. The model can be consistently estimated and used for prediction in a computationally efficient way. Similarly to the path size logit model, we propose an attribute called link size that corrects utilities of overlapping paths but that is link additive. The model is applied to data recording path choices in a network with more than 3000 nodes and 7000 links.