Poster 8: A System of Shared Autonomous Vehicles for Chicago: Understanding the Effect of Geofencing the Service
(Room Palms Ballroom)
16 Jul 19
5:30 PM
-
7:00 PM
Tracks:
Transportation Planning Impact Assessment
The world is evolving rapidly and the era of “autonomous” vehicles (AVs) is just around the corner. In this driverless future, traffic safety can potentially improve significantly due to the absence of human driver error. With AVs still in the testing phase, one must resort to simulation techniques to explore possible futures regarding shared and automated mobility. In this study, an agent-based discrete-event transport simulator, POLARIS, is used to simulate travel patterns in the 8-county Chicago region in a world of shared AVs (SAVs). Rising vehicle-miles traveled (VMT), especially with more convenient travel modes, needs to studied to understand possible solutions. A geofence for the SAV service is studied here at different spatial levels to see if forcing shorting trips to be made by SAVs can mitigate rising congestion. Results obtained here suggest that until such algorithms are developed to curb added VMT, services should likely be restricted to the urban core so as to minimize impacts on the overall transportation system through added VMT from the shared fleet.