Sustainable Urban Planning and Transportation Planning in the Face of Autonomous Vehicles

Dear Colleagues,

Autonomous and connected vehicles (ACVs) offer opportunities to transform sustainable urban and transportation planning with various advantages along with potential challenges. ACVs can improve accessibility, optimize land utilization, and decrease emissions from the perspective of sustainable urban planning. For example, ACVs are often electric vehicles (EVs) and play a significant role in greenhouse gas reduction and air pollution mitigation; ACVs can continuously operate throughout the day and decrease the need for parking spaces that could be reclaimed for affordable housing, green spaces, or mixed-use developments. ACVs can foster the development of compact, walkable neighborhoods that encourage community engagement and physical activity. Moreover, ACVs can improve the accessibility of marginalized communities, as an alternative mode of transportation.

ACVs have the potential to be integrated into Mobility as a Service (MaaS) platforms within the transportation planning sector. This integration can enable multimodal connectivity and decrease dependence on private vehicle ownership. Through this integration, transportation efficiency can be enhanced, traffic congestion can be decreased, and resource utilization can be optimized. Moreover, safety and operational efficiency can be improved by adapting infrastructure to accommodate ACVs through the deployment of intelligent traffic management systems and the installation of dedicated lanes. By capitalizing on the extensive volume of data produced by ACVs, transportation planners can make well-informed judgments concerning the optimization of routes, traffic management, and development of infrastructure. However, the extensive implementation of ACVs gives rise to a variety of challenges and associated research gaps. The ongoing development of regulatory frameworks for ACVs necessitates meticulous examination of concerns pertaining to privacy, liability, and safety issues associated with ACVs.

This Special Issue calls for papers that can explore advantages and address challenges of integrating ACVs from various perspectives for sustainable urban and transportation planning.

Dr. Young-Ji Byon
Guest Editor

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• autonomous vehicles
• connected vehicles
• sustainable urban planning
• transportation planning
• emissions reduction
• land use optimization
• accessibility
• mobility as a service (MaaS)