Effects of Driverless Vehicles on Competitiveness of Bus Transit Services
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 146, Issue 4
Abstract
The advent of driverless vehicles, including automobiles and buses, may considerably affect the competitiveness and ridership of public transportation services in negative as well as positive ways. Since driverless vehicles may be widely used in the fairly near future, public transit operators and transportation planners should prepare to deal with their anticipated effects. In this paper, (1) we formulate modular optimization models for both human-driven and automated bus services with fixed routes as well as flexible routes. These models are solved analytically. Their results can be used to abstract the essential characteristics of the transportation system and analyze system behavior. (2) We develop preliminary quantitative assessments of those effects, showing that without drivers, the introduction of automated vehicles can reduce the competitiveness of bus transit. (3) We conduct sensitivity analyses to explore how changes in input parameters affect the results. (4) We identify insights that may help prepare transit operators, transportation planners, and other transportation system stakeholders for effectively adapting to the introduction of driverless vehicles.
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Data Availability Statement
All data and models generated or used during the study appear in the published paper. The code used in the study is proprietary.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to the Urban Mobility & Equity Center led by Morgan State University, which partially funded this study.
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Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 146 • Issue 4 • April 2020
Copyright
©2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 28, 2019
Accepted: Sep 4, 2019
Published online: Jan 23, 2020
Published in print: Apr 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Jun 23, 2020
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