Dynamic Four-Step Planning Model of Empty Repositioning Trips for Personal Autonomous Vehicles
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 145, Issue 5
Abstract
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) offer new technologies that could revolutionize travel, such as greater link capacity and innovative intersection controls. One such traveler behavior is the potential for empty repositioning trips, in which a vehicle travels without any passengers. Repositioning trips could allow travelers to avoid parking costs or make their vehicle available to other household members. However, empty repositioning trips increase the demand for personal vehicle travel. A previous study using static traffic assignment on home-to-work trips showed that repositioning trips still resulted in a net increase in congestion even when link capacity improvements for AVs were modeled. This raises the question of whether empty repositioning trips should be permitted. However, a key characteristic of repositioning trips is that they depart after the traveler has been dropped off. This could reduce the concentration of demand at any point in time. By using dynamic traffic assignment with a more realistic model of link flow on the downtown Austin network, we showed that when repositioning trips encourage travelers to switch to AVs, the resulting improvement from those AVs could decrease congestion. Furthermore, even if all vehicles are AVs, the congestion resulting from empty repositioning is still less than current conditions. Therefore, allowing empty repositioning trips could be beneficial for the traffic network.
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Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Data-Supported Transportation Operations & Planning Center and the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1254921. We also thank Noah Weisz for his editing.
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Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 145 • Issue 5 • May 2019
Copyright
©2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 7, 2017
Accepted: Oct 17, 2018
Published online: Feb 28, 2019
Published in print: May 1, 2019
Discussion open until: Jul 28, 2019
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