Simulation of Demand-Responsive Transport (DRT) in Rural Germany Projected 31 Percent Reduction in Vehicle Miles Traveled.
Simulation Study Evaluated the Mobility Benefits of DRT in Connecting the City of Bremerhaven and Surrounding Rural Areas.
Germany
Impact assessment of autonomous demand responsive transport as a link between urban and rural areas
Summary Information
Demand Responsive Transportation (DRT) can facilitate mobility improvements in terms of both cost-efficiency and sustainability by, for instance, connecting rural areas with the urban centers. This study evaluated the feasibility of DRT systems in Bremerhaven, Germany and the immediate surrounding areas using an agent-based model developed using various data sources mainly ranging from 2018-2020. Two DRT scenarios and a baseline scenario with no DRT were considered in the simulations. The study area was separated into 11 districts, consisting of eight urban and three rural areas.
METHODOLOGY
Trip distributions were conducted by assigning the individual activity polygons to the corresponding districts by trip purpose. To assess the potential of DRT as a connecting mobility service of rural areas with an urban core, two scenarios were considered: i) population of the three rural areas were used in order to provide a comparative scenario opposed to the population of the whole sample. ii) population of a combination of both the rural areas and the urban core of the city of Bremerhaven were used. Additionally, a baseline scenario was considered, in which Motorized Individual Traffic (MIT) is carried out by individually owned cars as the only transport mode. In DRT scenarios, the assignment of requests to a DRT vehicle was done using a centralized, on-the-fly process.
FINDINGS
- Results for rural population sample scenarios indicated a 31 percent reduction in Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT).
- Results for rural and urban population sample scenarios indicated a 39 percent reduction in VMT.
