Working papers in Transport Economics,
CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI)

Abstract: The development of driverless vehicles is fast, and the technology has the potential to significantly affect the transport system, society and environment. However, there are still many open questions regarding what this development will look like and there are several counteracting forces. This paper addresses the effects of driverless vehicles by performing a literature review of twenty papers that use simulation to model effects of driverless vehicles. By combing and analysing the results from these simulation studies, an overall picture of the effects of driverless vehicles is presented. The paper shows that focus in existing literature has been on effects of driverless taxi applications in urban areas. Some parameters, such as trip cost and waiting time, show small variations between the reviewed papers. Other parameters, such as vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT), show larger variations and depend heavily on the assumptions concerning value of time and level of sharing. In general, increases in VKT are predicted for most applications. Ride sharing has the potential to reduce VKT, and thereby energy consumption and congestion, but the analysis indicates that a sufficient level of ride sharing to reduce VKT will not be achieved without incentives or regulations. Furthermore, the VKT of driverless vehicles is unevenly distributed from a time and space perspective, with larger increases in VKT during peak hours than in off-peak, and in the suburbs compared to city centres. The reviewed papers provide a first prediction of factors such as waiting time, VKT and trip cost, in particular for urban areas and for schemes where there is one service provider present. To get a deeper understanding of the effects of driverless vehicles, aspects such as local spatial considerations, e.g. at pick-up stations, and more complex schemes with competition between service providers should be studied. Furthermore, there is a need for sensitivity analyses regarding travel demand.

Keywords: Driverless vehicle; Automated vehicle; Autonomous taxi; Traffic simulation; Societal effects

JEL-codes: R40; R41

20 pages, June 11, 2018

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