City readiness for connected and autonomous vehicles: A multi-stakeholder and multi-criteria analysis through analytic hierarchy process

Abstract

The past decade has seen a rapid acceleration in investment on and development of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs). Cities need to be ready for the mass adoption of CAVs, to harness their benefits and minimise negative impacts. However, currently there are no concrete frameworks and criteria to measure city readiness for CAVs, and existing literature lacks quantitative multi-stakeholder analysis for this multi-stakeholder issue. This study thus aims to contribute to the knowledge gaps by exploring different stakeholders' assessment criteria on cities’ infrastructure readiness, policy and regulation readiness, and citizen readiness for CAVs, using analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Data were collected through an online survey (N = 381) with participants representing three professional and three general public stakeholder groups. The results show that infrastructure readiness was overall considered most important, and there were different opinions between stakeholder groups especially regarding policy and regulation readiness. These differences might be associated with stakeholder groups' expectations on the potential impacts of CAVs. Exchanges of views and concerns between different stakeholder groups are needed to gain a comprehensive understanding of how cities can be best prepared for CAVs.