10.12.2021
When fully autonomous driving becomes more than just a vision, the public transport sector will face some major challenges.
The auditing company Deloitte did a study on how urban mobility could look like in the year 2035. They found two especially surprising facts. For one, Deloitte predicts that every third trip that is going to be taken is done by an autonomous vehicle. The second finding suggests that autonomous driving providers are going to be half the cost of traditional public transport. If we take these two points into account, it is not a surprise that the study suggests, that we will see a 40 percent increase in traffic volume.
How many cars will we see in the future?
At first it might seem like that the numbers of cars will increase but that is not the case. We will see a decrease in total numbers of cars, but the efficiency level is expected to increase drastically. What does this actually mean? It means that there will be less cars parking on the road because the vehicles that do exist have a higher usage, which results in higher traffic volume. Expressed in figures, this means that there will be 20 percent less cars in the city, but 40 percent higher traffic volume.
How does this effect the public transportation sector?
In the long run autonomous taxi fleets and shuttles will take over public transpiration simply because of cost. Taking a robot-taxi instead of driving your own car will save you as much as 25 percent in cost. Even more significant is the comparison between regular public transportation and autonomous shuttles. The shuttles will cost 50 percent less and will offer more comfort in contrast to public transpiration.
Due to these reasons public transport will most certainly become less and less relevant in the future. The only question is, how long will this transformation take?
Written by: Antonius Eich
Data source: Deloitte