Traffic congestion in Sydney and Melbourne is a hot topic, but connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) offer a potential avenue to reducing those woes, according to a report.
L.E.K. Consulting’s report Reducing Urban Road Congestion — Are Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) the Answer? was launched at the Brisbane leg of its Future Transport Series 2019.
It included investigations into how consumers will interact with this technology.
While CAVs will not be the dominant mode of road transport for several decades, companies like Waymo and Lyft are testing society’s readiness for them.
The report by Simon Barrett, Mark Streeting and Ashish Khanna shows CAVs could increase road capacity by 45%-130%, although consumer acceptance is considered critical in realising such gains.
Ashish Khanna
L.E.K. surveyed about 2000 people in Sydney, supported by broader research.
Key findings include that CAVs are expected to improve road capacity, driven by technology enabled reduction in the safety gap or vehicle headway, from around 0.9 seconds to about 0.2s. The minimum tolerable safety gap for human comfort is around 0.5s between vehicles. The result of this improvement is an estimated effective capacity between 3300 and 5300 vehicles per lane hour. That’s an increase of 45% to 130% in vehicles per lane hour on today but still far less than what the technology is capable of delivering with a safety gap of 0.2s.
Some of these gains will be offset by increases in the demand for urban road use directly attributable to CAVs.
L.E.K. estimates urban road-based traffic volume could increase by about 10% to 25% over baseline traffic volumes by around 2060 as a result of shifts to new automated vehicle technology and the generation of new trips (such as those without a driver licence or who are unable to obtain one).
Mark Streeting
In the absence of regulation, CAVs are likely to introduce a trip multiplier with single trips that currently serve multiple purposes being disaggregated into two or more trips in the future.
L.E.K. research suggests that this trip multiplier could have the most significant impact on ‘school runs’, which could increase by up to about 100%.
“These findings have significant implications for the use of major infrastructure assets, such as roads, toll roads, rail, large car parks and mass transit,” L.E.K. senior partner Simon Barrett says. “The ownership model for CAVs and how consumers ultimately use them, will significantly affect demand for roads and whether congestion is actually improved. We are working with asset owners and investors to develop early perspectives on CAV technology, to help narrow the uncertainty about the impact of this technology on major capital investment decisions.”
Two key behavioural changes are also identified.
CAVs will allow passengers to be productive ‘on the go’, making people less sensitive to travel time and therefore more willing to shift away from tolled motorways offering faster journey times.
Simon Barrett
While L.E.K. survey responses indicate there is a strong preference for personal CAVs over pooled driverless transport, the willingness to embrace pooled rides is expected to increase as people become more comfortable with the sharing economy. For example, if ride pool penetration reaches 20%, passenger throughput on urban roads could increase by about 15%.
“Our research shows that Governments will need to carefully consider the impact of CAVs on road congestion,” L.E.K. partner Mark Streeting says.
“While the road capacity increases could be substantial, so too could be the increase in demand. As a result, a continued move to shared transport will be paramount.”
L.E.K new mobility global head Ashish Khanna says considerable conjecture exists among global clients whether autonomous vehicles herald a utopian or a dystopian future.
“Our work in this area suggests that, in some infrastructure related use cases, a balance can be struck between increased trip intensity and benefits from higher throughput capacity that is enabled by technology.
“This is a very important consideration for infrastructure investments as they look beyond the typical planning horizon.”
