Estimating Impacts of Automated Shuttles

Despite growing interest in the low-speed automated shuttle concept, pilot deployments have only just begun in a few places in the U.S., and there is a lack of studies that estimate the societal impacts of a widespread deployment of automated shuttles that are designed to supplement existing transit networks.

This project will estimate the potential impacts of automated shuttles based on a deployment scenario generated for a sample geographic area—Santa Clara County, California. Metrics are anticipated to address safety; accessibility, equity; energy, air quality, noise; vehicle miles traveled, passenger miles traveled, vehicle occupancy. The project will: identify sample deployment markets within Santa Clara County using a GIS screening exercise; test the mode share changes of an automated shuttle deployment scenario using BEAM, an open-source travel demand model developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and report the societal impacts based on the model outputs.