Emissions Impact of Connected and Automated Vehicle Deployment in California

Status

Complete

Project Timeline

October 1, 2018 - September 30, 2019

Principal Investigator

Areas of Expertise

Intelligent Transportation Systems, Emerging Technologies, & Big Data Safety, Public Health, & Mobility Justice

Campus(es)

UC Davis

Project Summary

The three revolutions in transportation—shared mobility, electrification and vehicle automation—will fundamentally change transportation around the world. Key challenges facing government and industry decision makers include changing patterns in vehicle ownership and use, traffic congestion, air pollution, energy use, and equity gaps. The Institute of Transportation Studies-Davis 3 Revolutions Future Mobility (3RFM) Program is currently leading a project funded by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to determine the range of vehicle miles traveled (VMT), energy usage, greenhouse gas (GHG) and criteria pollutant emissions associated with varying penetration levels of light-duty connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) at the transportation system-level in California under various assumptions (i.e., adoption of shared-owned and used vs. personally-owned automated vehicles in future years). The current project with CARB will be augmented with UC ITS SB 1 research funding to expand the scope of the project, including the development of a white paper summarizing the existing literature to inform planners and policy makers on the latest results and recommendations on how to model future impacts of CAV deployment, improvements to the California Statewide Travel Demand Model (a statewide activity-based travel demand forecasting model developed and maintained by Caltrans and its consultants) to help policy makers better understand future travel demand in a world dominated by CAVs, and a policy assessment and ranking of possible policy levers to support CARB in identifying best approaches for reducing GHG and criteria pollutant emissions. This work will inform California policy makers about the adoption and frequency of use of new shared mobility services, the potential impacts of connected and autonomous vehicles, and the changes that these technologies will have on various components of travel behavior, including the use of other travel modes, traffic congestion, VMT, vehicle ownership, GHG emissions and energy consumption.