Investigation of the Impacts of Shared Autonomous Vehicle Operation in Halifax, Canada Using a Dynamic Traffic Microsimulation Model

Abstract

This study presents a novel sequential modeling framework of shared autonomous vehicle (SAV) operation in the Halifax transport network. The Halifax regional transport network model is used to generate business-as-usual traffic demand in the morning peak hours. A new module of SAV assignment upon trip request is introduced and integrated with the traffic microsimulation model to simulate the SAVs’ occupied and empty trips in the network. The proposed framework demonstrates the capability to evaluate service performance of SAVs with different level of fleet sizes in the network. Model results suggest that fleet size of 900 SAVs serves 20% of the total morning commute trip requests. Traffic condition is improved for the first hour of peak periods as average speed increases and total travel time requirement decreases during operation of SAV fleet in Halifax. The results provide insights into SAV system planning in accordance to anticipated challenges of SAV adoption in transportation network.