Autonomous vehicles effects on public transport systems

Nowadays cities are subjected to an urbanization increase, such phenomena has several consequences that affect different topics but especially regard urban mobility, because of this increase the number of people using cars rises consequently congestion and CO2 emissions increase. The rise of private vehicles circulating creates a decrease of average speed travel that affect the entire city context so its liveability, then when a high number of vehicles moves into infrastructure that was not designed for that capacity probability of collision will increase due to the elevated interaction compromising people safety. For this reasons public transport systems represents a key role in the liveability of a city because most of them operates in reserved areas and moreover decrease the number of private vehicles moving in cities. The progress that automotive was subjected to affected also urban mobility, first of all the innovation that mainly involved public transport regarded the use of electric vehicles instead of fossil fuels ones, that had a significant environmental impact on bus public transport systems that used fossil fuels vehicles. Anyway the most important innovation that in the last decade is involving automotive regards autonomous vehicles (AVs), these new technologies represent an important change for public transport efficiency due to the elevated performance so the relevant reduction of human mistakes, then because of the high precision of headways would provide a high quality service. Taking into account that each public transport systems has its own characteristics in relation to vehicles type and configuration, the introduction of autonomous vehicles requires specific adjustments and changes.