| dc.description.abstract | Mobility is changing rapidly these days. New technologies happen in quick succession and have become more and more important. Conventional solutions are traffic management and adjustments in the mobility policy. Parallel to this a new trend has developed: (completely) automated vehicles (AVs). It is expected that this will change the streetscene in the decades to come. The autonomous vehicle has got the potential to keep the city of the future accessible, safe and livable. It is important to further inquire into the feasability of autonomous vehicles in order to quantify this.
Most researches into self-driving vehicles have been executed from the idea that mobility in the future will change by using new technologies. Very often the general conclusion of these researches is the fact that in that case a special infrastructure should be necessary in order to use the potential of automated vehicles. However, policymakers are nowadays of the opinion that the road network should not be expanded any further. In this research a radically different and new approach is followed. Attention is focused on the positive consequences of the self-driving vehicle on the mobility in the city of the future. The purpose of this research is to quantify these positive features. The emphasis is on the urban environment.
On the basis of interviews and literature research with respect to automated vehicles it is possible to come up with the most important effects and developments. Subsequently, several experts within the field of mobility have been interviewed about the future urban mobility. In view of these results four future scenarios have been described for the city of the future and the importance of self-driving vehicles within these scenarios. The scenarios are the following: 1) modernist city, 2) pleasurable city, 3) intelligent city and 4) comfortable city. For each scenario a different set of features and behaviour concerning self-driving vehicles is necessary. Consequently, the features of these scenarios have been translated into revalued parameters of vehicles in the microsimulation model. By analysing these, a lot of empirical data have been collected. Using microsimulation has provide more insights into the mobility of the city of the future. Two criteria that play an important part concerning these insights are traffic flow and road network capacity. | |
