The concept of shared mobility-on-demand (MoD) systems describes an innovative mode of transportation in which rides are tailored as per the immediate requests in a shared manner. Convenience of hailing, ease of transactions, and economic efficiency of crowd-sourcing the rides have made these services very attractive today. It is anticipated that autonomous vehicle (AV) technology may further improve the economics of such services by reducing the operational costs. The design and operation of such an shared autonomous mobility-on-demand (AMoD) system is therefore an important research direction that requires significant investigation. This thesis mainly addresses three issues revolving around the dispatching strategies of shared AMoD systems. First, it responds to the special dispatching need that is critical for effective AMoD operation. This includes a dynamic request-vehicle assignment heuristic and an optimal rebalancing policy. In addition, the dispatching strategies also reflect transit-oriented designs in two ways: (a) the objective function embodies the considerations of service availability and equity through the support of various hailing policies; and (b), the service facilitates first-mile connections to public transportation. Second, this thesis models the interaction between demand and supply through simulation. Using the level of service as interface, this mechanism enables feedback between operators and travelers to more closely represent the choices of both parties. A fixed-point approach is then applied to reach balance iteratively, estimating both the demand volume and the system performance at equilibrium. The results from the simulation support decision-making with regard to comprehensive system design problems such as fleet sizing, vehicle capacities and hailing policies. Third, the thesis evaluates the value of demand information through simulation experiments. To quantify the system performance gain that can be derived from the demand information, this thesis proposes to study two dimensions, level of information and value of information, and builds up the relationship between them. The numerical results help rationalize the efforts operators should spend on data collection, information inference and advanced dispatching algorithms. This thesis also implements an agent-based modeling platform, amod-abm, for simulating large-scale shared AMoD applications. Specifically, it models individual travelers and vehicles with demand-supply interaction and analyzes system performance through various metrics of indicators. This includes wait time, travel time, detour factor and service rate at the traveler's side, as well as vehicle distance traveled, load and profit at the operator's side. A case study area in London is selected to support the presentation of methodology. Results show that encouraging ride-sharing and allowing in-advance requests are powerful tools to enhance service efficiency and equity. Demand information from in-advance requests also enables the operator to plan service ahead of time, which leads to better performance and higher profit. The thesis concludes that the demand-supply interaction can be effective for defining and assessing the roles of AV technology in our future transportation systems. Combining efficient dispatching strategies and demand information management tools is also important for more affordable and efficient services.

The autonomous vehicle (AV) is poised to be one of the most disruptive technologies in the transportation industry. The advent of three major trends in transportation: automation, on-demand mobility and ride-sharing, are set to revolutionize the way we travel. The forthcoming adoption and commercialization of AVs are expected to have extensive impacts on our road networks, congestion, safety, land use, public transportation (PT) and more. Rapid advances in AV technology are convincing many that AV services will play a significant role in future transportation systems. The advancement of AVs presents both opportunities and threats to transportation. It has the potential to significantly impact traffic congestion, traffic accidents, parking and VMT (vehicle miles traveled), especially for people that are not able to drive such as children and elderly people. Motivated by the potential of autonomous vehicles, authorities around the world are preparing for this revolution in transport and deems this an important research direction that requires significant investigation. This thesis tackled and contributed to three main research questions related to the impact of autonomous vehicles on transportation systems. First, this thesis proposes a simulation-based approach to the design and evaluation of integrated autonomous vehicle and public transportation systems. We highlight the transit-orientation by respecting the social-purpose considerations of transit agencies (such as maintaining service availability and ensuring equity) and identifying the synergistic opportunities between AV and PT. Specifically, we identified that AV has a strong potential to serve first-mile connections to the PT stations and provide efficient and affordable shared mobility in low-density suburban areas that are typically inefficient to serve by conventional fixed-route PT services. The design decisions reflect the interest of multiple stakeholders in the system. Second, the interaction between travelers (demand) and operators (supply) is modeled using a system of equations that is solved as a fixed-point problem through an iterative procedure. In this, we developed demand and supply as two sub-problems. The demand will be predicted using a nested logit model to estimate the volume for different modes based on modal attributes. The supply will use a simulation platform capable of incorporating critical operational decisions on factors including fleet sizes, vehicle capacities, sharing policies, fare schemes and hailing strategies such as in-advance and on-demand requests. Using feedback between demand and supply, we enable interactions between the decisions of the service operator and those of the travelers, in order to model the choices of both parties. Finally, this thesis systematically optimizes service design variables to determine the best outcome in accordance to AV+PT stakeholder goals. Optimization objective functions can be formulated to reflect the different objectives of different stakeholders. In this paper, we specifically propose and develop a simulation-based service design method where we quantify various benefits and costs to reflect the objectives of key AV+PT stakeholders. We simulate the service with different sets of system settings and identify the highest performing set. We employ a case study of regional service contracting to showcase the ability of this method to inform AV+PT service design. We tested our approach with a case study area in a major European city on an agent-based simulation platform, amod-abm. Agent-based simulation has the advantage of capturing individual (agent) behaviors and the interactions of the various individual agents in a realistic synthetic environment where the intent is to re-create a complex phenomenon of mobility on demand service delivered by AV. Although this thesis will focus on a major European city, the general framework and methodologies proposed here can be widely applicable. The thesis concludes that the demand-supply interaction can be effective for designing and assessing the role of AV technology in our mobility systems. Moreover, simulation-based optimization can be an effective method for transit agencies to make decisions that support their overall AV related transport strategy as well as operational planning.

This book gathers together innovative research and practical findings relating to urban mobility transformation. It is especially intended to provide academicians, researchers, practitioners and decision makers with effective strategies and techniques that can support urban mobility in a sustainable way. The chapters, which report on contributions presented at the 5th Conference on Sustainable Urban Mobility, held virtually on June 17-19, 2020, from Greece, cover the thematic areas of: social networks and traveler behavior; applications of technologies in transportation and big data analytics; transport infrastructure and traffic management; and transportation modeling and impact assessment. Special attention is given to public transport and demand responsive systems, electromobility, micromobility and automated vehicles. The book addresses the challenges of the near future, highlighting the importance of knowledge transfer, and it is intended to foster communication among universities, industries and public administration.

This book explores the opportunities and challenges of the sharing economy and innovative transportation technologies with regard to urban mobility. Written by government experts, social scientists, technologists and city planners from North America, Europe and Australia, the papers in this book address the impacts of demographic, societal and economic trends and the fundamental changes arising from the increasing automation and connectivity of vehicles, smart communication technologies, multimodal transit services, and urban design. The book is based on the Disrupting Mobility Summit held in Cambridge, MA (USA) in November 2015, organized by the City Science Initiative at MIT Media Lab, the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California at Berkeley, the LSE Cities at the London School of Economics and Politics and the Innovation Center for Mobility and Societal Change in Berlin.

Demand for Emerging Transportation Systems: Modeling Adoption, Satisfaction, and Mobility Patterns comprehensively examines the concepts and factors affecting user quality-of-service satisfaction. The book provides an introduction to the latest trends in transportation, followed by a critical review of factors affecting traditional and emerging transportation system adoption rates and user retention. This collection includes a rigorous introduction to the tools necessary for analyzing these factors, as well as Big Data collection methodologies, such as smartphone and social media analysis. Researchers will be guided through the nuances of transport and mobility services adoption, closing with an outlook of, and recommendations for, future research on the topic. This resource will appeal to practitioners and graduate students. Examines the dynamics affecting adoption rates for public transportation, vehicle-sharing, ridesharing systems and autonomous vehicles Covers the rationale behind travelers' continuous use of mobility services and their satisfaction and development Includes case studies, featuring mobility stats and contributions from around the world