Impact of Self-Driving Car: 80% to 90% Fewer Cars Needed

For small and medium-sized cities, it is conceivable that a shared fleet of self-driving vehicles could completely obviate the need for traditional public transport, a new study by the International Transport Forum of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development suggests.  

Shifting to driverless car services would deliver nearly the same mobility, but with just 10 percent of the total number of cars.

In other words, “TaxiBots” combined with high-capacity public transport could remove 90 percent of all cars in a mid-sized European city. Even without any public transportation, a system of driverless cars would remove 80 percent of cars.

The problems would occur during rush hours, though. Overall vehicle-kilometers travelled during peak periods would increase, in some cases quite substantially.

Where AutoVot car sharing happens without a high capacity public transport scenario, the increase could reach 103 percent. That would be an unmanageable situation, the report suggests.

Reduced parking needs would  free up significant public and private space. In all cases examined, self-driving fleets completely remove the need for on-street parking.

Additionally, up to 80 percent of off-street parking could be removed.

The size of the self-driving fleet depends on the robustness of the public transport system.

Around 18 percent more TaxiBots and 26 percent more AutoVots are needed in scenarios without high-capacity public transport, compared to scenarios where shared self-driving vehicles are deployed alongside high-capacity public transport.