How Cities Can Use Autonomous Vehicles to Increase Transit Ridership and Reduce Household Vehicle Ownership

Automated vehicles and connected vehicles are highly anticipated. It is expected that over the next few decades innovations related to these two technology vectors will transform the automotive industry, personal mobility, public transportation, the taxi industry, land use, urban planning, transportation infrastructure, jobs, vehicle ownership, and many other physical and social aspects of our built world and our daily lives. However certain we may be that fully autonomous vehicles (AVs) will dominate motorized urban and inter-urban transportation in the foreseeable future, everything else including its timing, cost, labour disruption, congestion, rights of way, and the management of interim fleets of mixed autonomous and non-autonomous vehicles can only be surmised. The constellation of unpredictable barriers and unforeseen innovations is far more extensive than the cornucopia of potential and hoped-for benefits. We begin with a simple recap of the expected technology trajectory for robotic vehicles. Following that we consider the dimly-understood vehicle-capability landscape with which transportation planners must contend over the next 50 years. Next, we discuss vehicle ownership arguing that ownership will in the end be more important for sustainability and liveability than will the speed with which robotic technology matures and become pervasive. After this we present a case for robotic public transit and finally a process that uses robotic vehicles to dramatically expand transit ridership that we call Transit Leap.

• Record URL:
  http://ctrf.ca/?page_id=3781
• Corporate Authors:

  Canadian Transportation Research Forum

  ,    
• Authors:
  • GRUSH, B
  • Niles, J
• Conference:
  • Canadian Transportation Research Forum 51st Annual Conference - North American Transport Challenges in an Era of Change//Les défis des transports en Amérique du Nord à une aire de changement Toronto, Ontario, May 1-4, 2016
• Publication Date: 2016

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Pagination: 1 PDF file, 340 KB, 8p.
• Monograph Title: Canadian Transportation Research Forum 51st Annual Conference - North American Transport Challenges in an Era of Change//Les défis des transports en Amérique du Nord à une aire de changement Toronto, Ontario, May 1-4, 2016

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Conferences; Forecasting; Motor vehicles; Ownership; Planning; Public transit; Urban areas
• Uncontrolled Terms: Use
• Geographic Terms: Canada
• ITRD Terms: 1244: Autonomous vehicle; 8018: Canada; 8525: Conference; 132: Forecast; 143: Planning; 744: Public transport; 313: Urban area; 9084: Use; 315: Vehicle ownership
• Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01647385
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Transportation Association of Canada (TAC)
• Files: ITRD, TAC
• Created Date: Sep 28 2017 12:29PM