Freight Modeling Study Showed That When Fully Automated Truck Shipping Costs Drop to Half That of Human-Driven Trucks There Will Be a Solid Increase in Truck Mode Share Resulting in a 6.0 Percent Increase in Ton-Miles Transported by Truck.
Study Simulating the Use of Fully Automated Vehicles and Trucks Across Texas and USA Revealed Mobility Benefits.
Texas, United States
Nationwide, United States
Understanding the Impact of Autonomous Vehicles on Long Distance Passenger and Freight Travel in Texas: Final Report
Summary Information
This study modeled the long-distance travel impacts of fully automated cars and trucks on passengers and freight movements across Texas and the entire United States before and after the introduction of AVs. Different datasets, including a 2021 long-distance passenger AV survey designed in this study, the 2016-2017 National Household Travel Survey, EPA Smart Location, and FHWA’s ‘rJourney’ datasets, were used for model estimation.
METHODOLOGY
This study applied the passenger models to a 10 percent synthetic US population (12.1M households and 28.1M individuals across 73,056 census tracts). For freight-travel impacts, a four-step travel demand model was used for trip generation and distribution, mode choice, and traffic assignment across human-driven trucks, fully Automated Trucks (ATrucks), rail, and intermodal rail. The long-distance passenger-travel survey designed and distributed as part of this study included about 70 questions tackling aspects of long-distance travel, AVs, and Shared fully Automated Vehicle (SAV) use, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on long-distance travel. The survey received responses from 1,004 individuals from Texans and other US residents.
FINDINGS
- The results from the user survey revealed that Texans were about 40 percent more willing to travel long-distance using AVs than other US respondents in scenarios where the use of AVs imposed a zero to 50 percent increase in travel time.
- The survey results also indicated that if automated vehicle travel reduced long-distance travel costs by half, nearly 60 percent of Texans would be at least "more likely" to travel in a fully automated vehicle.
- Passenger modeling results indicated that, assuming a $3,500 technology cost premium in a future year such as 2040, total person-miles traveled per capita for existing long-distance trips were projected to rise by 35 percent, from 280 to 379 miles per month.
- The freight modeling results showed that, when ATruck shipping costs dropped to half that of human-driven trucks, truck mode share was predicted to increase by 4.2 percentage points (from 57 to 61.2 percent), with a six percent increase in ton-miles transported by truck.
- In the scenario with fully automated vehicles, the annual perceived congestion cost savings was projected as $241,000, assuming that 2019 traffic volumes remain consistent each year, which is a conservative estimate.
- This study also assumed that if this technology enabled an additional 0.01 percent hypothetical reduction in Texas roadway fatalities (attributable to fully automated vehicles) it would lead to an estimated final annual economic impact of 1,720,000 savings in terms of fatalities for a 20-year analysis period.
