How Autonomous Driving May Affect the Value of Travel Time Savings for Commuting

Abstract

Autonomous driving is being discussed as a promising solution for transportation-related issues and might bring some improvement for users of the system. For instance, especially high mileage commuters might compensate for some of their time spent travelling since they will be able to undertake other activities while going to work. At the same time, there are still many uncertainties and few empirical data on the impact of autonomous driving on mode choices. This study addresses the impact of autonomous driving on value of travel time savings (VTTS) and mode choices for commuting trips using stated choice experiments. Two use cases were addressed-a privately owned and a shared autonomous vehicle-compared to other modes of transportation. The collected data were analyzed by performing a mixed logit model. The results show that mode-related factors such as time elements, especially in-vehicle time and cost, play a crucial role for mode choices that include autonomous vehicles. The study provides empirical evidence that autonomous driving may lead to a reduction in the VTTS for commuting trips. We found that driving autonomously in a privately owned vehicle might reduce the VTTS by 31% compared to driving manually and is perceived similarly to in-vehicle time in public transportation. Also, riding in a shared autonomous vehicle is perceived 10% less negatively than driving manually. The study provides important insights on VTTS by autonomous driving for commuting trips and can be a base for future research to build upon.

Discussing the “positive utilities” of autonomous vehicles: will travellers really use their time productively?

“…Although in-vehicle VOT estimates did decrease (to about 65% of current mode) for the ride-alone shared AV, the shared-ride AV option saw much smaller VOT reductions (to about 90% of current mode). These findings were corroborated by a German stated preference mode choice study (Steck, Kolarova, Bahamonde-Birke, Trommer, & Lenz, 2018), which also found that a shared AV option reduced auto VOT much less (10% reduction) than privately-owned AVs (31% reduction). A stated preference experiment in the Netherlands looked at the use of AVs as an egress mode for train trips (Yap, Correia, & van Arem, 2016).…”

“…Local governments and mobility-as-a-service providers prefer business models centred on providing short-distance urban trips via shared and re-deployable AV fleets (Chase, 2017), but it is difficult to be productive on short-duration trips due to start-up loss times and minimum task durations. Additionally, people prefer riding in their own vehicles or riding alone to sharing rides with strangers (Zmud et al, 2016), so discomfort (and VOT) may be higher or could even increase for shared AVs with dynamic ride-sharing (Steck et al, 2018;Krueger et al, 2016;Yap et al, 2016).…”

Simulation of the Daily Activity Plans of Travelers Using the Park-and-Ride System and Autonomous Vehicles: Work and Shopping Trip Purposes

“…These two types of travelers were chosen because of their frequent travel to either work or shopping, and they are more likely to use P&R system to save time searching for parking spaces, avoid extra cost for parking, and avoid congestion at the city center. While other travelers are less likely to use P&R facilities because they are not frequent travelers and their behaviors are different than workers and shoppers, for example, the value of travel time is lower than for shoppers and workers [30,31]. From the literature, the P&R system can be used mainly by those travelers who travel for work or shopping using their conventional personal cars [32].…”

Robo-Taxi service fleet sizing: assessing the impact of user trust and willingness-to-use

“…A review of the existing literature reveals the large attention given today to behavioral experimental studies considering the use of various types of AVs. Some limited investigations also address the case of shared AVs (Bansal et al, 2016;Haboucha et al, 2017;Krueger et al, 2016;Steck et al, 2018). In almost all these studies, the traveler perception and tendency towards using AVs are explored in an attempt to predict the market penetration rate.…”