Will New Driving Technologies Change the Value of Public Transportation Investments?

Imke Reimers, Benjamin Reed Shiller and Benjamin R. Shiller

No 11956, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We analyze how self-driving vehicles (SDVs) influence commuter behavior and returns to long-lived public transit investments. Using a commuting mode model estimated on detailed home and work location data from Greater Boston, we simulate the widespread entry of SDVs, which offer passive travel similar to transit but use existing road networks. We find that SDVs increase vehicle miles by 40% while decreasing public transit use by about 10%. Transit improvements continue to moderately boost revenues and lower miles driven, but their effects on mileage are small compared to SDVs. These findings highlight planning challenges posed by the emergence of SDVs.

Keywords: self-driving vehicles; public transit investment; infrastructure planning; transportation economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp11956.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11956

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().