Transport-policy instruments in the age of autonomous vehicles in motorized private transport

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Georg Hirte; Dr. Stefan Tscharaktschiew
• Subject Area: Traffic and Transport Systems, Intelligent and Automated Traffic
• Term: from 2019 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 434191927

The aim of the proposed research project is to investigate how the incentive and welfare effects of transport policy instruments change when autonomous vehicles (AV) in motorized private transport (MPT) become available on a large scale. Research in transportation has developed a series of price-based and regulative instruments to internalize external effects resulting from noise, particulate emissions, accidents or greenhouse gas emissions, to reduce coordination problems such as congestion, energy demand and land use, and to finance social infrastructure costs. From a transport economics point of view, the focus is on the overall economic efficiency of the instruments, which also takes into account feedback effects on the economic system. For this purpose, the literature provides specific approaches applied at the macroeconomic and spatial level but without AV. However, AV can change the impact of instruments. For example, parking fees, similar to congestion charges, increase the price of trips and therefore provide incentives to reduce the number of trips in MPT. In contrast, AV can produce the opposite effect. When fully autonomous vehicles no longer park at their destination but drive around empty or move to more distant parking lots, traffic increases. In this case, the analogy with other forms of transport pricing vanishes. A systematic reassessment of transport policy instruments is, therefore, necessary when AV enter the market. The proposed research project wants to close this research gap. The project implements AV into two relevant transport economic models - an optimal tax model in the tradition of the double dividend literature and a spatial equilibrium model (Objective 1 and Objective 2). The optimal tax model is well suited to examine general instruments at a macroeconomic level, for example subsidizing the purchase of AV or levying miles or energy taxes. The spatial model is particularly suited to consider spatially differentiated instruments at the urban level, such as parking fees or congestion charges mentioned above. Goal 3 is the re-evaluation of the instruments. For this purpose, we derive hypotheses on the impact of selected transport policy instruments in the face of mass use of AV from the extended models. Subsequently, we calibrate and numerically solve the models if possible with Monte Carlo simulations to determine signs and magnitude of the efficiency effects and other evaluation parameters. Finally, we derive policy recommendations for the choice of appropriate instruments (Objective 4). We implement the models with German data. The extended methodology is applicable to other countries.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants