A holistic index for readiness to accommodate connected autonomous vehicles

Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) are about to hit the roads but an important question is that how ready are our cities with respect to policies and infrastructure elements that can accommodate CAVs? This research develops a holistic index for readiness to accommodate CAVs. The index ranks readiness of cities based on their soft and cyber infrastructure, pro-CAV policies, hard infrastructure, and other transportation supply and demand measures. The authors identify 32 variables, segmented into four categories, that can plausibly foster CAV market penetration. The variables are then combined to form a single index. In doing so the authors use two scoring schemes. In the first scoring scheme, each variable is a dichotomous variable which gets the value of 1 if the city has the corresponding feature, and 0 otherwise. In the second scheme, which is a weighted scoring scheme, the authors give additional weight to some variables. This is done by considering multiple cutoff points for each variable of interest and assigning greater scores to better practices or the conditions better promote CAV adoption. 98 cities of the Contiguous US with the highest population are ranked and results are discussed. The authors find that not all the US cities to a large extent not completely ready to welcome CAVs. With simple readiness scoring, Denver, CO, Detroit, MI, and Atlanta, GA are recognized to be the most ready. The weighted scoring scheme identifies Denver and Phoenix, AZ to be the top ranked cities for CAVs. On the other hand, Lexington, KY, Toledo, OH, and New Orleans, LA receive the lowest readiness scores in both weighted and simple scoring schemes. The authors find that large cities are currently prepared than small- and medium-size cities. However, smaller cities have the potentials to be ready even sooner than some of the large cities if appropriate infrastructure investments are made.

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

  Transportation Research Board

  ,    
• Authors:
  • Talebian, Ahmadreza
  • Mishra, Sabyasachee
  • Golias, Mihalis
  • Khan, Junaid Ahmed
  • Santo, Charles A
  • Wang, Lan
  • Jacobs, Eddie L
  • Astorne-Figari, Carmen
  • Simpson, Jesse
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 98th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2019-1-13 to 2019-1-17
• Date: 2019

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Maps; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 7p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Cities; Connected vehicles; Infrastructure; Intelligent vehicles; Market penetration; Policy; Ratings
• Geographic Terms: United States
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; Policy; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01697495
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 19-02097
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 1 2019 3:51PM