Sustainable Accessibility and the Implementation of Automated Vehicles: Identifying Critical Decisions

TLDR

Fully automated vehicles are expected to appear within the next decade to three decades, raising societal questions about their consequences, and the extent of their impact will hinge on critical decisions that are currently underexplored, as existing research focuses mainly on commercial viability, safety, and environmental metrics rather than the broader disruptive potential. The study investigates how automated vehicles affect accessibility, using a scenario‑based approach to identify critical decisions that could either worsen or improve accessibility. The authors apply Geurs and Van Wee’s definition of accessibility within a scenario‑based framework to explore these impacts. The findings indicate that automated vehicles could either significantly worsen or markedly improve accessibility, depending on how critical decisions are governed, and that poor governance could lead to a dystopian mobility future.

Abstract

The emergence of fully Automated Vehicles (AVs) is expected to occur in the next 10 to 30 years. The uncertainties related to AVs pose a series of questions about what the societal consequences of such technology are. Mainly, what are the consequences of AVs regarding accessibility? This paper uses Geurs and Van Wee’s definition of accessibility to give an exploratory answer to this question. Using a scenario-based approach which allows identifying critical decisions that will emerge shortly (or are already emerging) concerning automated travelling, this paper proposes that AVs have great potential to both seriously aggravate and considerably alleviate accessibility problems. A great deal will depend on how these critical decisions will be approached and the choices that will be made. This debate is most needed because existing research on AVs tends to focus on how to make them a commercially viable and safe technological enterprise, and on what their benefits and drawbacks are regarding variables such as carbon emissions, energy consumption, and total miles travelled. Narratives of this nature can be problematic, as they are unlikely to promote sufficient awareness about the real disruptive potential of AVs. It is crucial that stakeholders realise the extent to which—if the governance of AVs implementation processes is not taken very seriously, and the identified critical decisions are not carefully approached—these machines can materialise a dystopian mobility future.