Dear Colleagues,

The future mobility scenario of cities is expected to be profoundly and rapidly revolutionized by the presence of autonomous and intelligent vehicles. Currently, the city center is the area most affected by the negative impact of large traffic volumes, such as congestion, air pollution, and health risks. Local authorities around the world are implementing transportation policies to reduce the use and ownership of cars in cities. Possible solutions are technological changes, and autonomous and intelligent vehicles can be an obvious opportunity to reduce air pollution, health risks, improve road safety, with a significant impact on energy use. This opens up interesting prospects for research in this field: new models for the simulation of transport systems, definition, and assessment of future scenarios, also considering a transition period in which autonomous vehicles and traditional ones will share the same road infrastructure. Open issues include traffic regulations in the presence of autonomous vehicles, the impact on the capacity of a mixed flow of autonomous and traditional vehicles, the willingness to use/purchase autonomous vehicles, the tendency to use (eventually) shared autonomous vehicles, the possibility of applying reserved-lane policies to automomous vehicles, the definition of parking rules, and, in general, the search for optimal demand and supply management to promote the introduction of autonomous vehicles in cities. Therefore, the development of new models and methods is fundamental to address some technical, economic, and social problems associated with the planning, the implementation, and the assessment of transport systems.

The main objectives (but not the only ones) of this section are to collect the advancements in this field, considering the aspects of:

· travel demand analysis,

· supply analysis,

· accessibility and capacity analysis,

· impacts in case of different autonomous vehicles penetration rates,

· road safety,

· location and scheduling of a sharing system.

 

Dr. Antonio Polimeni

Section Editor

Autonomous vehicles; transportation theory; transportation services; transport choice modeling; shared transportation systems; automotive technologies; road safety; transportation demand; transportation supply; traffic assignment.