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Safety guidelines for autonomous vehicles (AVs) in many regions or countries require AV service providers to have the means to communicate with vehicles and the ability to stop them safely in case of emergencies. The transition to full deployment of AV services is dependent on more advanced monitoring methods. This study uses a survey of approximately 2000 residents of Japanese cities to investigate how monitoring methods affect their intentions to use these services. In particular, the survey is designed to understand how individuals react to unattended operations and remote monitoring in road passenger services including buses and taxis; the survey includes direct questions about intentions to use autonomous buses and taxis and a stated choice experiment based on the respondents’ preferences over their current mode of transportation and autonomous taxis. The results show that monitoring methods have mixed impacts. On one hand, monitoring could affect the general acceptance of AV services. The difference in the overall resistance to using these services is particularly large between the onboard human and remote monitoring options. Individuals tend to express stronger resistance to more advanced remote monitoring. On the other hand, the stated choice results show that the effects of these monitoring factors could be less significant in the actual settings of transportation mode choices; the effects of travel cost and time factors are likely to be more significant. These results suggest that when individuals consider AVs in the context of real-world decisions, their resistance to new technologies is diminished in comparison to their responses to abstract questions.
Ryosuke Abe; Yusuke Kita; Daisuke Fukuda. An Experimental Approach to Understanding the Impacts of Monitoring Methods on Use Intentions for Autonomous Vehicle Services: Survey Evidence from Japan. Sustainability 2020, 12, 2157 .
AMA StyleRyosuke Abe, Yusuke Kita, Daisuke Fukuda. An Experimental Approach to Understanding the Impacts of Monitoring Methods on Use Intentions for Autonomous Vehicle Services: Survey Evidence from Japan. Sustainability. 2020; 12 (6):2157.
Chicago/Turabian StyleRyosuke Abe; Yusuke Kita; Daisuke Fukuda. 2020. "An Experimental Approach to Understanding the Impacts of Monitoring Methods on Use Intentions for Autonomous Vehicle Services: Survey Evidence from Japan." Sustainability 12, no. 6: 2157.
The introduction of autonomous buses and taxis is expected to generate such benefits as cost reductions—and particularly for regional bus operations with a substantial deficit—as well as enhancing public transit accessibility through decreased trip costs. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the impacts of introducing autonomous buses and taxis on metropolitan transportation systems by quantifying the costs of travel in Japan, and to discuss the potential benefits. First, this study sets the assumptions on autonomous driving technology, including its impacts on vehicle costs, the decreased labor costs for driving and safety monitoring in buses and taxis, and decreased driving stress for private car users. Next, operating costs are computed for autonomous buses and taxis in Japanese metropolitan areas. The costs of travel, or the sum of monetary and time costs, are then computed with and without vehicle automation for different trip types in high- and low-density metropolitan areas. The results highlight that the costs of public transit trips that currently have a smaller share of time costs in overall trip costs could decrease considerably due to vehicle automation. For instance, costs for 10–20-km trip lengths could decrease by 44–61% for taxi trips and 13–37% for rail/bus trips with taxi access, followed by a decrease of 6–11% for bus trips and 1–11% for rail trips with bus access. Further, private car trip costs could decrease by 11–16%. More substantial cost reductions in rail/bus trips with taxi access could occur in the case of smaller trip distances and/or in residential areas far from stations; larger reductions in rail trips with bus access could occur in low-density metropolitan areas. Finally, it is expected that vehicle automation in more fixed modes of public road transit could primarily benefit the transit industry and government, with such effects as improved labor productivity and reduced subsidies, while vehicle automation in more flexible modes could benefit metropolitan residents as well as the transit industry. This further suggests that a deficit of regional bus operations could be recovered during the transition to the full performance of autonomous buses.
Ryosuke Abe. Introducing autonomous buses and taxis: Quantifying the potential benefits in Japanese transportation systems. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 2019, 126, 94 -113.
AMA StyleRyosuke Abe. Introducing autonomous buses and taxis: Quantifying the potential benefits in Japanese transportation systems. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice. 2019; 126 ():94-113.
Chicago/Turabian StyleRyosuke Abe. 2019. "Introducing autonomous buses and taxis: Quantifying the potential benefits in Japanese transportation systems." Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice 126, no. : 94-113.