Individual accessibility impacts of public transport automation on (groups of) rural dwellers

Rural areas typically register low accessibility. This fact negatively affects their attractiveness, the well-being of their population in general, and population subgroups with limited access to private cars or strong space-time constraints (like minors, the elderly or members of large households). Collective autonomous vehicles (AVs) might improve this situation, e.g. by enhancing standard line-based services or introducing alternative shared schemes. Nevertheless, the collective usage of AVs in rural transport and their potential impacts on accessibility are still underexplored, with most research focused on the urban context. This study aims to fill this gap by analysing the public transport accessibility impacts that five alternative AV supply scenarios might generate in the rural valley of Mühlwald (South Tyrol, Italy). To this end, a variant of the standard space-time accessibility model developed by the authors is used. This focuses on accessibility by public transport specifically, and measures it to both fixed activities and discretionary opportunities. Accessibility impacts are first estimated at the person-based level for a sample of residents. Then, they are aggregated for the whole sample and six subgroups that tend to experience more substantial accessibility issues based on the literature. Results show that line-based AV applications provide limited accessibility benefits. Conversely, time-flexible applications like ride-shared vans or combinations of line-based trunks and on-demand feeders over peak and off-peak hours may provide the most evident advantages, especially for the subgroups with the tightest space-time schedules. Although these results do not reflect other possible impacts of AVs (e.g. environmental effects), they provide policymakers with valuable insights into the collective AV usages that could be most suitable in the rural context regarding person-based accessibility gains.