Automated vehicles (AV) dedicated networks and their effects on the traveling of conventional vehicle drivers

Abstract

AV subnetworks is a way to deal with automated traffic and its technological need that will likely increase during the AVs deployment period. This strategy carries many benefits, yet some inconveniences are worth to mention. One of them relies on the fact that the design of AV subnetworks is often in practice focused on mitigating congestion in the peak-hours. However, designing for the most congested hour can be quite delicate when such a strategy is fixed throughout the day. The remaining part of the day involves different mobility patterns and shifting trips patterns throughout the day, i.e., different Origin-Destination pairs. When such O-D pairs are inside these AV subnetworks, CV owners cannot drive, and therefore a new mode of transport is necessary. This paper focuses on the lower-level decision problem, i.e., the traffic distribution during the transition period while AVs are being deployed in urban areas and AV subnetworks are expanding. A nonlinear mathematical programming model is presented to perform the trip distribution, where walking appears as an alternative. The main objective of this paper is to study the impacts of AV subnetworks from a CV owners’ perspective. A novel formulation guarantees that CV trips starting inside AV subnetworks throughout the day aren’t ignored – this means an alternative mode of transport, in this case, walking. This paper evaluates throughout the day when such situations would likely occur in a case study of the city of Delft, in the Netherlands, in two scenarios with AV subnetworks. The experiments revealed that walking is somehow inevitable when AVs reach 75% of the vehicle fleet – increasing travel costs up to 26.0% and 43.8%.