Transportation Systems with Autonomous Vehicles: Models and algorithms for equilibrium assignment

Technologies for connected, automated or autonomous vehicles (AVs) are fast developing, so that they seem ready for substituting in the near future privately owned non-autonomous traditional vehicles (TVs) and further supporting the spread of shared vehicles both for person and good transportation. On the other hand, it may easily be anticipated that the time needed to turn the existing stock of TVs into AVs will last several years during which mixed traffic is expected. A change so great may be not technology-driven only, but also requires a carefully analysis of its several impact through well designed enhancements of tools already available to the transportation systems modelers and planners. Such enhanced tools may be casted in the general framework of multi-user class assignment to transportation networks, concerning: (i) transportation network analysis, through level-of-service models distinguishing between non-autonomous vs. autonomous vehicles, presumably sharing same infrastructure; (ii) travel demand analysis, through behavioral choice modeling paradigms, including choice between AVs vs. TVs, owned vs. shared, as well as route choice behavior; (iii) steady-state equilibrium assignment. This paper describes models and algorithms to deal with steady-state equilibrium assignment; they are used to show to which extent existing methods can still be applied as well as which issues remain still open and worth of further research efforts.