External Economic Costs of Intelligent Urban Transportation Systems: A Method to Evaluate the Externalities of Comparative Technology Adoption Pathways in the Urban Mobility Service sector

Abstract

By 2050, urban mobility demands will increase to 2.6 times the current level, even faster than the urban population growth. Current urban transportation plans fail to address these rapidly increasing urban mobility demands. Inefficient urban transportation generates great economic losses in traffic congestion, air pollution and climate change. The current urban transportation pressure and emerging technology-driven trends have revolutionized how industry players respond to changing consumer behavior, develop partnerships, and drive transformational changes. A transition (P2S) from current product-based competition to a marketplace focused on mobility services is expected. Electric vehicles, automated driving systems and mobility-sharing platforms are introduced to provide mobility services by market-agents in the P2S transition. The adoption of these technologies has proven to be beneficial in simulations. In reality, externalities occur when introducing disruptive technologies into a marketplace with the absence of instrumental institutions (non-market agents). However, all agents fail to evaluate the economic impacts of different technology adoption pathways at the mass-adoption scale. The method proposed in this research contains: (1) a resource-demand view framework to capture multiple technology adoption pathways in the P2S transition (2) scenario designs that integrate electric vehicle technology, automated driving systems, and mobility sharing platforms in one or several combinations (3) a set of economic externality models to evaluate the costs of traffic congestion, human health impact, and climate change resulting from each variation. This dissertation is an informative comparative study that demonstrates the externalities (social economic impacts) of different sets of technology adoptions in urban mobility. Regulators can utilize the method while funding research and designing regulations for disruptive automotive technologies. The method also provides a platform for market-agents to quantify the economic impact of new product designs in the mobility marketplace