Simulation of Shared Autonomous Vehicles Operations with Relocation Considering External Traffic: Case Study of Brussels

Abstract

Simulation studies on Shared Autonomous Vehicles (SAVs) could offer several insights to transport policymakers about future mobility. Case studies using the agent-based approach have recently emerged worldwide to test the impacts of SAVs on local networks. However, as the most densely populated area in Belgium, a relevant SAV study for Brussels is currently lacking. In this paper, we have simulated the impacts of substituting Brussels private car trips for people who either only travel in Brussels or do not travel to external places by car. The simulation was carried out with various SAV fleet sizes implementing vehicle relocation strategy. This paper describes how we transferred certain car trips to SAVs, and the respective SAV parameters used for simulation. The results suggest that under a 10% current travel demand, if all current studied drivers groups are willing to carpool as long as the additional travel times do not exceed a certain threshold, 1000 SAVs will be sufficient to replace these car trips in Brussels with the average daily request waiting time of around 5 minutes. By deploying SAVs with the proposed operational scheme, agents’ overall travel time and traffic congestion in Brussels can also be significantly reduced.