Mode Split Equilibrium Microsimulation Approach for Early-Stage On-Demand Shared Automated Mobility

The initial hype around Automated Vehicle (AV) technologies has subsided, and it is now being realized that near-term deployment of AV technologies will be in the form of low-speed shared automated shuttles in geofenced districts with a high density of trip demand. A concept labeled ‘Automated Mobility Districts’ (AMD) has been coined to define such deployments. A modeling and simulation toolkit that can act as a decision support tool for early-stage AMD deployments is desired for answering the questions such as (i) for a series of given conditions, such as the amount of travel demand and automated shuttle fleet configuration, what is the expected mode split for shared automated vehicle (SAV) services? (ii) for that mode share of SAVs, what level-of-service and network performance can be anticipated? To answer these research questions, an innovative and integrated framework of multi-mode choice and microscopic traffic simulation model is presented to obtain the equilibrium of mode split for various modes in AMDs, based on real-time traffic simulation data. The proposed framework was tested using travel demand and road network data from Greenville, South Carolina, considering a car, walk, and two SAV on-demand ridesharing modes in a proposed AMD. Results from the study demonstrated the efficacy of the proposed framework for solving the mode split equilibrium in an AMD. In addition, sensitivity analyses were conducted to understand the impact of factors such as waiting times and fleet resources on mode share equilibrium for SAVs.