Abstract
Framework: Rural areas typically register lower accessibility than urban areas. This condition islinked to various factors, such as the lack of on-site opportunities, the long distances to travel daily, andthe low competitiveness of collective transport. These issues tend to undermine the attractiveness ofrural areas and may contribute to their depopulation. At the same time, they affect the wellbeing ofrural population and especially of people with e.g. no access to private cars or strong space-timeconstraints. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) might change this condition in the next decades, e.g. byimproving rural collective transport and increasing accessibility. For instance, traditional bus lines couldbecome more frequent, while on-demand rideshared services could spread even in low-demand zones.
State of art: Nevertheless, studies exploring the interplay between AVs, rural areas, and theirpotential accessibility impacts are still limited. Most of the research focuses on urban areas, where AVsare expected to trigger the most evident changes regarding e.g. the mobility degree, modal split,congestion and parking space. Only some studies have explored how AVs could be used to upgraderural collective transport, and even less have tried to measure their potential impacts on ruralaccessibility, especially at the individual (or population-group) level.
Aim of the dissertation: Considering this framework, this dissertation examines the potentialimpacts of collective transport automation on the accessibility of rural areas. In particular, it addressesboth the individual accessibility impacts on (groups of) rural dwellers, and the collective impacts onrural areas as a whole. To make this analysis, the rural valley of Mühlwald (South Tyrol, Italy) and asample of its residents are taken as case study. The remote nature of this area and the limitedavailability of collective transport services at the status quo make it suitable for the research purpose.
Structure of the dissertation: To achieve its objective, this dissertation has produced a researchproject proposal financed by the Austrian Science Fund in 2021 and seven peer-reviewed papers. In thefirst phase, a literature review is performed to set a conceptual framework of the potential impacts ofAVs on accessibility (Paper 1). In the second phase, conceptual use cases proposing possible usages ofAVs in rural collective transport are defined (Paper 2); and five concrete transport-supply scenarios aredesigned for Mühlwald by quantifying their performances (Paper 3). In parallel, models to measureaccessibility at the individual and collective level are reviewed and the space-time model is identifiedas suitable reference (Paper 4). This model is adjusted to the specific project purpose and tested,leading to a so-called “Space-Time Accessibility model by Public Transport” (PT-STA model; Paper 5). Inthe last phase, the PT-STA model is applied to the five transport-supply scenarios to estimate theirpotential impacts on individual and collective space-time accessibility (Paper 6 and 7).
Results and future perspectives: Results show that applications of AVs either replacing bus lineswith rideshared taxis, or combining both over space and time, may provide the highest accessibilitygains. Conversely, scenarios that provide only an upgrade of current bus lines get limited accessibilitybenefits. These results apply to the accessibility of Mühlwald in general, and especially to theaccessibility of population groups with strong space-time constraints like women, full-time worker andmembers of large households. These results provide policymakers with first insights into the pros andcons of different AV usages for rural accessibility. However, the analysis needs to be extended to otherkinds of impacts. For instance, the potential reaction of the demand to the transport-supply scenarios,and the consequent variations in the overall mobility degree of rural areas (vehicle kilometerstravelled), should be estimated and combined with the accessibility impacts to get a broader picture.