Bounding the Potential Increases in Vehicles Miles Traveled for the Non-Driving and Elderly Populations and People with Travel-Restrictive Medical Conditions in an Automated Vehicle Environment

Automated vehicles represent a technology that promises to increase mobility and accessibility not only to the senior population but also to non-drivers and people with medical conditions. This paper estimates the impact of a fully automated vehicle environment on the total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by the current U.S. population 19 and older due to an increase in mobility from the non-driving and elderly populations and people with travel-restrictive medical conditions. The primary source of data for this project is the 2009 National Household Transportation Survey (NHTS), which provides information on current travel characteristics of the U.S. population. The changes to the total VMT are estimated by examining three possible demand wedges. In demand wedge one, the assumption made is that non-drivers would travel as much as the drivers within each age group and gender. Demand wedge two assumes that the driving elderly without medical conditions will travel as much as young adults (ages 19-64) within each gender. Demand wedge three makes the assumption that drivers with medical conditions will travel as much as the drivers without medical conditions within each age group and gender in a fully autonomous and connected vehicle environment. The combination of the results from all three demand wedges represents an upper bound of 297 billion miles or a 12% increase in overall VMT. Since traveling has other costs than driving effort, this estimate serves to bound the potential increase from these populations to inform the scope of the challenges, rather than forecast specific VMT scenarios.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB30 Vehicle-Highway Automation.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Harper, Corey
  • Mangones, Sonia
  • Hendrickson, Chris
  • Samaras, Constantine
  • 0000-0002-8803-2845
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2015-1-11 to 2015-1-15
• Date: 2015

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 14p
• Monograph Title: TRB 94th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Aged drivers; Intelligent vehicles; Persons with disabilities; Traffic forecasting; Travel demand; Vehicle miles of travel
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01555281
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 15-1609
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 26 2015 10:05AM