Automated Vehicles: Economic Incentives for Environmental Benefits and Safety

Road travel in light-duty vehicles, while of great economic value to private consumers and society, also generates a range of social costs. These include environmental damage from localized and global emissions, energy security concerns from petroleum use, external accident risk, and road congestion. These social costs are addressed only partially by the existing system of fuel taxation and road charges. Research on efficient pricing discusses how taxes might be set on motor fuel and road use to reflect social costs of motor vehicle use. The challenge is to understand how fuel and mileage taxation can alter market outcomes to better manage external costs while taking into account the appropriate level and balance of taxation. Because connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) can change how people assess their time in vehicles, both in terms of quantity and quality, it is important to design robust policies that can allow the market development of CAVs to take advantage of their private benefits while establishing incentives for beneficial environmental and social outcomes. This research has two thrusts. First, the authors make the first known contribution to proposing efficient tax levels for CAV road travel. It extends the existing research for conventional manually-driven vehicles and considers how tax policy may need to change for CAVs given their substantially different societal impacts and private incentives. The second thrust addresses how consumers will use and adopt CAVs as they become available. The authors describe their methods and finding for these two thrusts separately but draw conclusions reflecting insights from both.

• Record URL:
  http://utc.mit.edu/uploads/UMER25-37-FP.pdf
• 
• Record URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/43930
• Supplemental Notes:
  • This research was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation, University Transportation Centers Program.
• Corporate Authors:

  University of Maine, Orono

  Orono, ME  United States  04469

  New England University Transportation Center

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 40-279
  Cambridge, MA  United States  01239

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Authors:
  • Rubin, Jonathan
  • 0000-0002-4793-8499
  • Noblet, Caroline
• Publication Date: 2017-12-5

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Edition: Final Report
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 11p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Autonomous vehicles; Connected vehicles; Environmental impacts; Externalities; Incentives; Intelligent vehicles; Policy; Social impacts; Taxation
• Subject Areas: Economics; Environment; Highways; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01701613
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: UMER25-37
• Contract Numbers: DTRT13-G-UTC31
• Files: UTC, NTL, TRIS, ATRI, USDOT
• Created Date: Apr 9 2019 11:44AM