Modal Shift and Shared Automated Demand-Responsive Transport: A Case Study of Jerusalem

By definition, the Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) system integrates transportation modes of very different flexibility - taxis, buses, light rail, ride-hailing. MaaS major unknown is the effectiveness of the ride-sharing modes. We employ a calibrated and validated MATSim multi-modal traffic model of the Jerusalem Metropolitan Area (JMA) to assess the introduction of Shared Autonomous Vehicles (SAV), as a possible game-changer of the existing equilibrium between the Public Transport (PT) and private cars. First, we confirm the recent empirical observations that ride-sharing modes mostly attract PT users, while their attractiveness for private car users is relatively low. Second, we investigate the problem of preserving travelers' flows to the Jerusalem center while reducing personal car use. For this purpose, we investigate the effect of parking prices and congestion charges in the system with the additional SAV fleet that serves trips to-and-from the center of the city. We propose a balanced set of carrot-and-stick measures to enforce a sustainable modal shift in JMA towards the use of PT and SAV service.