Integration of Shared Autonomous Fleets in Public Transport: : A Case Study of Uppsala, Sweden

Abstract: Autonomous vehicles are predicted to disrupt the current landscape of urban mobility.Many studies have investigated how autonomous vehicles, either operated as a serviceor as private cars, could compete against public transport and even replace it. Fewerstudies have investigated how autonomous vehicles could actually be an opportunityfor the public transport sector, as a new type of offer that would cover specific needsalong traditional modes such as buses or metros.The aim of this project is to quantify the effect of replacing part of the public transportnetwork of Uppsala by demand-responsive autonomous fleets. This is achieved bybuilding a transport model based on the traditional four-step transport model andcalculating the total cost of the network both from the passenger and the operator’sperspective.The study shows that autonomous vehicles can slightly improve the performance of thenetwork and work best when combined with traditional bus lines. However, they alsoincrease the traffic and have a risk to cause congestion.