Conventional Private vehicles (CPVs) give rise to many problems and challenges in urban mobility networks, such as air pollution, traffic congestion, traffic accidents and parking shortages. Shared Autonomous Vehicles (SAVs) have recently been put forward as a potential alleviation to these challenges. For urban planners and policymakers, it is crucial in preparation for such a transformative technology to investigate the impact of SAVs under different operational strategies and to estimate the impact of using SAVs to reduce urban private vehicle dependency. This dissertation investigates the extent to which SAVs can be integrated into current metropolitan regions' mobility systems to reduce the usage of CPVs and the respective impacts on society as a whole using Agent-based Simulation (ABM).
We develop an ABM generation pipeline based on social-spatial data and cellphone origin-destination matrices that generate simulation data representative of real-life travel patterns. The input data all adhere to privacy regulations, which shows the significant transferability of our methods. We demonstrate the proposed pipeline in MATSim with a case study in Brussels, Belgium. To test the impact of substituting CPV trips with SAVs, SAVs are introduced as a new mode in the MATSim Brussels scenario integrated with the Park-and-Ride initiatives. The proposed policies for eliminating current CPV trips bring notable benefits, including a substantial CPV replacement ratio, increased PT utilisation, reduced travel demand in the city centre and significant transport emission reductions. However, there are also drawbacks, such as lower SAV service levels, longer travel time for travellers and increased congestion in regions with high demand.
Overall, this research presents a benchmark from raw social-spatial and cellphone data towards the digital testbed for SAV policy evaluations for reducing CPV trips in metropolitan regions towards more urban sustainable mobility networks. Using a case study for Brussels, we offer several recommendations for effectively integrating SAVs into urban transport systems, emphasising that the SAV technology itself is not enough to reduce the current reliance on CPVs. Collaborative efforts and coordination among various stakeholders are necessary to achieve the full potential of SAVs towards a more sustainable, accessible and efficient future.