Impacts of Autonomous Vehicles on Consumers Time-Use Patterns

Abstract

Abstract:We use the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) to characterize how different consumers in the US might use Autonomous Vehicles (AVs). Our approach is to identify sub-groups of the population likely to benefit from AVs and compare their activity patterns with an otherwise similar group. The first subgroup is working individuals who drive to work with long total travel times. Auto-travelers in the top 20% of travel time number 19 million and travel 1.6 h more on a workday than those in the bottom 80%. For car-commuting professionals, the additional travel time of the long-traveling group comes from 30 min less work, 29 min less sleep, and 30 min less television watching per day. The second subgroup is working individuals with a long travel time and who take public transport. Long public transit riders show very similar differences in activity times as the driving subgroup. Work, sleep, and video functionalities of AVs are presumably in high demand by both groups. The third sub-group identified is elderly retired people. AVs enable mobility-restricted groups to travel more like those without restrictions. We compare two age groups, 60-75 years and >75 years old, the latter, on average, experiencing more mobility restrictions than their younger counterparts. The retired population older than 75 years numbers 16 million and travels 14 min less per day than retirees aged 60-75 years. The main activity change corresponding to this reduced travel is 7 min per day less shopping and 8 min per day less socializing. If older retired people use AVs to match the lifestyle of the 60-75 years old group, this would induce additional personal travel and retail sector demand. The economic, environmental and social implications of AV are very difficult to predict but expected to be transformative. The contribution of this work is that it utilizes time-use surveys to suggest how AV adoption could induce lifestyle changes inside and outside the vehicle.

Assessing the Sustainability Implications of Autonomous Vehicles: Recommendations for Research Community Practice

“…Harper et al 2016 [37] found that if 69 million elderly, non-driving, and medically restricted people were to use AV to travel similar to current drivers, that would induce a 14% increase in light-duty vehicle miles traveled. Das et al 2018 [6] characterized what consumers would do inside an AV by analyzing the activities heavy drivers (2.5 hours of driving/day) sacrifice compared to the rest of the population (1 hour of driving/day): 30 minutes per day of sleep, watching video, and work, respectively. Scenario analysis is useful to identify issues and bound the magnitude of their effects; however, resulting bounds are wide, and when factors are summed, that can lead to uncertainty (e.g., in the net energy impacts of AVs) [36].…”

“…For example, Harper and collaborators used this approach to scope how the elderly would use the technology by assuming older people with AVs would drive the same as younger people today with conventional vehicles [37]. Das et al compared workers with very long car commutes and shorter commute workers, postulating that the latent demand for activities lost to extra driving time is described by the activity patterns of the short commuting group [6]. In the third approach, mathematical models, generally based on utility optimization, are developed to simulate consumer choices [17].…”

“…For example, the average American worker drives 1.3 hours per day; the upper 20%, consisting of nine million people, spends 2.6 hours per day behind the wheel [6]. Choices of where to live, work, and play are influenced by having to spend time driving.…”

Influence of Autonomous Vehicles on Freeway Traffic Performance for Undersaturated Traffic Conditions

“…Furthermore, AVs can have social impacts by providing independent mode of transportation for disabled and elder people. In addition, they can reduce the stress on the drivers and increase the utility of in-vehicle time by enabling the passengers to do other activities during travel time rather than driving tasks (Litman 2014, Das et al 2017.…”

Autonomous Road Vehicles: Challenges for Urban Planning in European Cities

“…Scientists believe that the wide-scale implementation of AVs will bring transformative changes in mobility and accessibility, travel patterns, safety and security, energy efficiency, emissions, employment, data availability, governance and business models [4][5][6][7][8]. However, the scarcity of data for the real-life assessment of these changes often leads scientists to uncertain or even controversial conclusions.…”