Estimating impact of autonomous driving on value of travel time savings for long-distance trips using revealed and stated preference methods

Abstract

Autonomous driving might change the value of travel time savings (VTTS) since it potentially enables alternate time use and increases comfort. Riding autonomously on long-distance trips can be an attractive use case, since long-distance driving is often felt as an exhausting/tedious task. Simultaneously, while first empirical insights on impact of automation on VTTS for daily trips are available, there is a lack of studies addressing long-distance travel. In order to close this gap, we have estimated potential changes in VTTS and mode choices for long-distance trips resulting from availability of autonomous vehicles using stated-choice experiments and estimating a mixed logit model. A reduction of VTTS by 22% is found for riding autonomously compared to driving manually. This contribution underlines the impact of vehicle automation on long-distance related mode choices, discusses its implications and provides empirical base and input for travel demand modelling.