Strategic sustainability assessment of rideshare and automated vehicles using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP)

Abstract

New mobility concepts such as Mobility as a Service (MaaS) are emerging as potential solutions to move people more sustainably in an increasingly urbanized world. Planning for this multi-modal mobility requires a whole system approach (STEEP - social, technical, economic, environmental, and political) to evaluate alternative future scenarios and address varied stakeholder concerns. A strategic planning tool was selected that can model alternative scenarios for how urban mobility systems may evolve over time. A sustainable mobility scorecard was defined, comprised of individual metrics generated from the tool's output. The Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was selected and applied to generate stakeholder weightings from an online survey of U.S. transportation planning professionals. Those weightings were applied to the scorecard to demonstrate their influence on alternative planning outcomes. Results include the scorecard metrics assessed with the greatest relative importance to sustainability; increases in no car ownership, increases in the transit/walk/bike mode share especially in lower income populations, maintaining the average peak traffic speed (actual/posted), and reducing cars per capita. The resulting weighted scorecard, part of a strategic assessment methodology for mobility sustainability (SAMMS), is then used to evaluate four future planning scenarios with contrasting trends (socio-demographics, travel behavior, employment, land use, transport supply) for the greatest overall sustainable mobility outcome.