This study investigates the challenges and opportunities pertaining to transportation policies that may arise as a result of emerging autonomous vehicle (AV) technologies. AV technologies can decrease the transportation cost and increase accessibility to low-income households and persons with mobility issues. This emerging technology also has far-reaching applications and implications beyond all current expectations. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the relevant literature and explores a broad spectrum of issues from safety to machine ethics. An indispensable part of a prospective AV development is communication over cars and infrastructure (connected vehicles). A major knowledge gap exists in AV technology with respect to routing behaviors. Connected-vehicle technology provides a great opportunity to implement an efficient and intelligent routing system. To this end, we propose a conceptual navigation model based on a fleet of AVs that are centrally dispatched over a network seeking system optimization. This study contributes to the literature on two fronts: (i) it attempts to shed light on future opportunities as well as possible hurdles associated with AV technology; and (ii) it conceptualizes a navigation model for the AV which leads to highly efficient traffic circulations.

The rapid pace of developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is providing unprecedented opportunities to enhance the performance of different industries and businesses, including the transport sector. The innovations introduced by AI include highly advanced computational methods that mimic the way the human brain works. The application of AI in the transport field is aimed at overcoming the challenges of an increasing travel demand, CO₂ emissions, safety concerns, and environmental degradation. In light of the availability of a huge amount of quantitative and qualitative data and AI in this digital age, addressing these concerns in a more efficient and effective fashion has become more plausible. Examples of AI methods that are finding their way to the transport field include Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), Genetic algorithms (GA), Simulated Annealing (SA), Artificial Immune system (AIS), Ant Colony Optimiser (ACO) and Bee Colony Optimization (BCO) and Fuzzy Logic Model (FLM) The successful application of AI requires a good understanding of the relationships between AI and data on one hand, and transportation system characteristics and variables on the other hand. Moreover, it is promising for transport authorities to determine the way to use these technologies to create a rapid improvement in relieving congestion, making travel time more reliable to their customers and improve the economics and productivity of their vital assets. This paper provides an overview of the AI techniques applied worldwide to address transportation problems mainly in traffic management, traffic safety, public transportation, and urban mobility. The overview concludes by addressing the challenges and limitations of AI applications in transport.

We develop a Kalman filter for predicting traffic flow at urban arterials based on data obtained from connected vehicles. The proposed algorithm is computationally efficient and offers a real-time prediction since it invokes the connected vehicle data just before the prediction period. Moreover, it can predict the traffic flow for various penetration rates of connected vehicles (the ratio of the number of connected vehicles to the total number of vehicles). At first, the Kalman filter equations are calibrated using data derived from Vissim traffic simulator for different penetration rates, different fluctuating arrival rates of vehicles and various signal settings. Then the filter is evaluated for a variety of traffic scenarios generated in Vissim simulator. We evaluate the performance of the algorithm for different penetration rates under several traffic situations using some statistical measures. Although many of the previous prediction methods depend highly on data from fixed sensors (i.e., loop detectors and video cameras), which are associated with huge installation and maintenance costs, this study provides a low-cost mean for short-term flow prediction only based on the connected vehicle data.

On-demand shared mobility is increasingly being promoted as an influential strategy to address urban transport challenges in large and fast-growing cities. The appeal of this form of transport is largely attributed to its convenience, ease of use, and affordability made possible through digital platforms and innovations. The convergence of the shared economy with a number of established and emerging technologies—such as artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and Cloud and Fog computing—is helping to expedite their deployment as a new form of public transport. Recently, this has manifested itself in the form of Flexible Mobility on Demand (FMoD) solutions, aimed at meeting personal travel demands through flexible routing and scheduling. Increasingly, these shared mobility solutions are blurring the boundaries with existing forms of public transport, particularly bus operations. This paper presents an environmental scan and analysis of the technological, social, and economic impacts surrounding disruptive technology-driven shared mobility trends. Specifically, the paper includes an examination of current and anticipated external factors that are of direct relevance to collaborative and low carbon mobility. The paper also outlines how these trends are likely to influence the mobility industries now and into the future. The paper collates information from a wide body of literature and reports on findings from actual ‘use cases’ that exist today which have used these disruptive mobility solutions to deliver substantial benefits to travellers around the world. Finally, the paper provides stakeholders with insight into identifying and responding to the likely needs and impacts of FMoD and informs their policy and strategy positions on the implementation of smart mobility systems in their cities and jurisdictions.

Connected vehicles (CVs), be they autonomous vehicles or a fleet of cargo carriers or Uber, are a matter of when they become a reality and not if. It is not unreasonable to think that CV technology may have a far-reaching impact, even to the genesis of a completely new traffic pattern. To this end, the literature has yet to address the routing behavior of the CVs, namely traffic assignment problem (TAP) (perhaps it is assumed, they ought to follow the traditional shortest possible paths, known as user equilibrium [UE]). It is possible that real-time data could be derived from the vehicles’ communications that in turn could be used to achieve a better traffic circulation. In this article, we propose a mathematical formulation to ensure the CVs are seeking the system optimal (SO) principles, while the remainder continue to pursue the old-fashioned UE pattern. The model is formulated as a nonlinear complementarity problem (NCP). This article contributes to the literature in three distinct ways: (i) mathematical formulation for the CVs’ routing, stated as a mixed UE-SO traffic pattern, is proposed; (ii) a variety of realistic features are explicitly considered in the solution to the TAP including road capacity, elastic demand, multiclass and asymmetric travel time; and (iii) formal proof of the existence and uniqueness of the solutions are also presented. The proposed methodology is applied to the networks of Sioux-Falls and Melbourne.