Infrastructure requirement for autonomous vehicle integration for future urban and suburban roads – Current practice and a case study of Melbourne, Australia

Abstract

Autonomous vehicle technology and its enabled mobility services are evolving at a more rapid pace than the understanding of the infrastructure required for them to be efficiently and safely implemented. This has not been systematically investigated in literature or practice. This research makes exploratory efforts to investigate this research area by examining and evaluating the infrastructure requirements needed to support autonomous vehicles. It formulates an infrastructure change guideline and an evaluation framework to prioritise the safety, efficiency and accessibility when integrating autonomous vehicles alongside conventional vehicles and multimodal users such as public transport commuters and pedestrians. The case study results show that for different type of regions, being a regional commercial and transportation hub in a residential area and a regional CBD street in a multimodal and spatially limited area, different arrangement and trade-offs can be made. Promisingly, the proposed guideline and framework work sufficiently, and serve as a first step towards a more systematic guideline for autonomous vehicle integration. The outcome of the research consists of a review of approaches that can guide urban planners and other users to understand and prioritise the implementation of autonomous vehicles.