Project Summary
New mobility alternatives that are available now to various extents or are envisaged in the near future include shared mobility systems such as ridesharing and carsharing, and autonomous vehicles. A wide range of possibilities exist, in terms of the kind of vehicle supply from various mobility providers, the kind of system that underlies the network and develops the travel demand from a population of travelers, the kind of vehicle ownership or subscription options available to the residents, the associated costing and pricing paradigms and the traditional travel options such as self-driving and transit system usage. The interactions between the components of such a system are complex, and not well-understood currently. Thus an agent-based simulation platform (“Autonomicityâ€) has been under development at UCI with SB-1 funds. This platform has the necessary modules with proper state-of-the art routing, ride-matching, pricing and other algorithmic components, as well as the real-time communication among them. While the platform itself is not specific to a given urban network, any modeling of integrated future mobility options would require studies in a specific network. A network in the city of Irvine, California, is currently proposed to be simulated on the platform. This network is expected to be the site for one or more field tests of sensor systems as well as autonomous vehicle systems in the near future. This proposal is to prepare the integrated agent-based modeling platform for the selected network, and to use it for planning the field trials. The main item of focus is the design of test vehicle deployments using simulated results from the platform.