Navigating a fad or the future? Opportunities and limitations in integrating carshare membership and automated vehicle propensity in travel demand forecasting

ABSTRACT

New mobility services, including carsharing and automated vehicles (AVs), are changing mobility. Gathering evidence on the prospective adoption and uncertainty surrounding new technologies is critical, but technological changes outpace the speed with which planners can inform policy. This study demonstrates the feasibility of bridging planners’ programming and experimentation responsibilities in navigating uncertainty by developing forecasting tools which account for new technologies and fuse data from a large-scale Canadian household travel survey, the Transportation Tomorrow Survey (2016), with a one-time, internet-based survey with questions related to new mobility services. This study uses a fused nested logit model to explore the characteristics of consumers with propensities towards AV ownership and carshare membership in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. Findings indicate joint effects of these two technologies. This approach of utilizing smaller-scale, issue-focused surveys in conjunction with traditional regional household travel surveys offers significant potential for planners to prepare more nimbly for uncertainty.

KEYWORDS:

• Automated vehicles
• carsharing
• discrete choice
• new mobility
• transportation planning
• uncertainty
• application

Acknowledgements

Errors and omissions in this article are the responsibility of the study authors. Views articulated in this paper do not reflect those of the authors’ current or past employers. Funding for this project was provided by Metrolinx and the City of Toronto to collect, process, and analyze survey data. Several individuals warrant acknowledgement in data processing and testing, and include Kailey Laidlaw, Tyler Olsen, and Elyse Comeau.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).