Navigating a fad or the future? Opportunities and limitations in integrating carshare membership and automated vehicle propensity in travel demand forecasting

Abstract

New mobility services, including carsharing and automated vehicles (AVs), are changing mobility. Gathering evidence on the prospective adoption and uncertainty surrounding new technologies is critical, but technological changes outpace the speed with which planners can inform policy. This study demonstrates the feasibility of bridging planners’ programming and experimentation responsibilities in navigating uncertainty by developing forecasting tools which account for new technologies and fuse data from a large-scale Canadian household travel survey, the Transportation Tomorrow Survey (2016), with a one-time, internet-based survey with questions related to new mobility services. This study uses a fused nested logit model to explore the characteristics of consumers with propensities towards AV ownership and carshare membership in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. Findings indicate joint effects of these two technologies. This approach of utilizing smaller-scale, issue-focused surveys in conjunction with traditional regional household travel surveys offers significant potential for planners to prepare more nimbly for uncertainty.