The ‘Sharing Trap’: A Case Study of Societal and Stakeholder Readiness for On-Demand and Autonomous Public Transport in New South Wales, Australia
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Main issue is that authors are not mobility experts and did not performed a proper revision of the topic. TOD have been explored in several projects and paper and authors work in their silo ignore the rich community work on this topic.
The approach performed is a standard and conclusion does not provide much new information.
Figure 1 does not belong to the authors and they use as their own.
Literature review are based on similar topics like Ridepooling (individuals share their trips) that this is different then TOD (transportation on demand). This two topics are different and authors address as the same...
They provide only review on work that they know but did not cover the existing knowledge.
That is fundamental in a scientific paper in my opinion.
Also interview population is short and represents only a case. It is not possible to generalization from this
Author Response
Hello, Reviewer 1! Thank you for reading over our paper!
- Main issue is that authors are not mobility experts and did not performed a proper revision of the topic. TOD have been explored in several projects and paper and authors work in their silo ignore the rich community work on this topic.
It is easy to defend Dr. Nelson and Dr. Wong’s reputations as mobility experts, particularly in the fields of mobility-as-a-service (MaaS). Further, in our backgrounds in transportation planning, “TOD” is commonly used to refer to “transit-oriented development” and “ODT” as “on-demand transport”. This is the acronym we have used in our paper.
- The approach performed is a standard and conclusion does not provide much new information.
Paired with our earlier work (using focus groups), we think that the interesting angle here is that sharing anxiety is not understood or acknowledged by stakeholders, which will mean significant problems for the adoption of autonomous public transport. But it is quite true that we have aimed for a standard approach with qualitative methods.
- Figure 1 does not belong to the authors and they use as their own.
We apologize for the unclear text, and we have changed the manuscript so that it’s now quite clear. Figure 1 does belong to the authors. It also includes ODT as its last level of comparisons between different mobility modes.
- Literature review are based on similar topics like Ridepooling (individuals share their trips) that this is different then TOD (transportation on demand). This two topics are different and authors address as the same...
We try to differentiate between the two topics, ridepooling and ODT, partially with Figure 1, and also by discussing different types of articles. We do not address them as the same mobility service, but it is their similarities of course that make them valuable. It is also the differences in the widespread adoption of ridepooling and the relative struggle for ODT to be established that make this area of research important.
- They provide only review on work that they know but did not cover the existing knowledge.
There are an increasing number of articles on this topic, and it would be impossible to cover every single one. We have tried to give a broad overview of the articles that help us illustrate the problem we are trying to address. Further, this article is meant as a policy paper and not a thorough literature review. We are preparing a separate literature review, and take this feedback for that future work.
- Also interview population is short and represents only a case. It is not possible to generalization from this
We address the small sample size in our article, and it is only meant to represent the case of New South Wales. We do not mean to say that these opinions will be held globally. However, since TfNSW is so progressive with its ODT pilots and policies, we feel that it is worth recognizing potential gaps and mistakes it is making as a lesson for other municipalities and regions that are developing their own autonomous transport systems.
We hope that we have been able to answer most of your questions or concerns. If you have additional comments or suggestions to improve the paper, we are eager to hear it!
-The Authors
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
The article presents very interesting content and addresses a current problem that needs to be addressed in the near future.
The first question is asked right at the beginning of the article:
1) Is the number of interviews conducted, N = 13, correct to conclude that the obtained data are statistically correct?
2) Based on the three questions asked, can policy guidelines be developed for each area?
3) How was the selection of experts who took part in the study?
4) Did the experts represent the same area of activity? Were they experts from different regions of the world?
For some of the questions, I think the authors will find answers in the literature, for example:
1) https://doi.org/10.3390/en14092622
The structure of the article is correct, but the editing part contains a few misses:
- gaps in the literature, e.g. literature no. 4, 44.
Best regards.
Author Response
To Reviewer #2: Thank you for taking the time to read our article!
- This is a small sample size, we admit. However, our time frame was originally only four weeks, and to do face-to-face interviews. The interview questions were done as conversational interviews, not standardized interviews, and so we did not look to make any statistical analyses on the responses. We looked to do more qualitative interpretation instead.
- We have attempted to make policy suggestions for Transport for New South Wales given the results of our investigation. Four suggestions are made in the Discussions section.
- We address this in our Methodology section, where we discuss snowball sampling. In short, our initial group of interviewees participated at an AV conference in Sydney during the research visit, and we used those participants to recommend other experts in the field. Given the personal introduction, we felt it was more likely that future interviewees would agree to help with our research, as opposed to any uninvited requests for participation.
- We also state in the methodology where the experts came from: six transport operators, two representatives from Transport for New South Wales, two representatives from the Point to Point Transport Commission (within TfNSW), two technology providers (in this case, AV manufacturers) and one academic. They all work within the transportation industry or field, but from different perspectives. They all came from around Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
- I think now the reference list is correctly numbered…thank you for noticing this!
Please let us know if there are any other concerns or suggestions you have regarding our paper!
-The Authors
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
After reading the paper I can make next considerations: a) I find a lot of errors in text editing. Please correct b) The Delphi method used in collecting data must be correct presented c) Please describe the questions used in collecting data d) Please show how you decide these questions e) Please make a statistic analyze using the answers obtained f) Please adapt the conclusions to the previous analysisAuthor Response
To Reviewer #3: Thank you for taking the time to read over our paper!
I have tried to fix all of the typos, and made sure that the reference list is now correctly numbered.
You mentioned the Delphi Method; however, we did not use the Delphi Method to conduct the investigation. Each interviewee was selected through "snowball sampling", and the interviews were done one at a time. Since we did not employ the Delphi Method at the beginning, it would be impractical to use it now. However, we will consider using the Delphi Method in future investigations!
When you say "questions used in collecting the data", do you mean the script used for the interviews? We attach that now as an appendix.
We developed the questions for use with conversational interviewing, not standardized interviewing, so it would be difficult to make a statistical analysis with them. However, I have changed the text so that this is more explicit.
Unfortunately, the conclusions drawn are from the analysis as it was done with the conversational techniques, and not with the Delphi Method. I am afraid that we would not be able to change this with the data we have available to us (from this particular study). Is there something more specific with the conclusion that we have drawn that are problematic...?
Please let us know how else you could suggest us to improve the paper. And thank you again for your time and input!
-The Authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Still doubts about the work and major contribution
13 interviews is a very low number to extract conclusions and the authors did not provide details about the data process and associate uncertain
Major outputs are well-known facts.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer:
Thank you for taking the time to read the new version and contribute with your feedback. We respond to your comments point by point:
Still doubts about the work and major contribution
After consideration, we have added two more policy recommendations and broken them down into two categories: three within the realm of ODT, and three for TfNSW's interactions with transportation network companies. Please see the latest version of the paper!
13 interviews is a very low number to extract conclusions and the authors did not provide details about the data process and associate uncertain
I have added a section making it explicit why we have a small sample size and that this is a single case study. Our data was gathered through audio-recorded interviews and processed qualitatively, as mentioned in the methodology.
Major outputs are well-known facts.
While these conclusions may seem obvious to academic experts in the field, our interviews and interactions with stakeholders showed a knowledge gap in the professional setting, which we hope publishing our findings will help narrow.
We hope we have managed to answer your comments! Please let us know if you have additional feedback or suggestions that can improve the paper for publication.
Best regards,
The Authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear Authors,
thank you for answering my questions. I think that in this form the article can be conditionally admitted to the publication.
Nevertheless, for the following articles, please take into account all comments that were provided to you during the review process. These are good pointers for the future.
Best regards
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
Thank you for your feedback! We are excited that you see value in our work and we have strived to take into account your comments as well as those of the other two reviewers.
Based on the feedback, we have created two categories for the policy recommendations, to make it more explicit (and hopefully, helpful, for other researchers and practitioners). We have also changed the title to make it clear that this is a case study.
Thank you again, and if you have other feedback or suggestions, please let us know!
Best wishes,
The Authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors make some minor change in paper. These don't respond to all my comments.
Author Response
Hello!
Once again, thank you for taking the time to review the paper.
I can respond to your comments on a point by point basis, if that is preferable.
a) I find a lot of errors in text editing. Please correct We have attempted to do so! Please let us know if you find other errors. b) The Delphi method used in collecting data must be correct presented We did not use the Delphi method. We used another method known as snowball sampling. We changed the text so that this was more explicit. But unfortunately we cannot go and use the Delphi method retroactively. c) Please describe the questions used in collecting data We have included the questions used in collecting the data as an Appendix. Is your suggestion to actually make the questions an explicit part of the article itself, in the text? d) Please show how you decide these questions The final questions were decided by discussion between the three authors. We have changed the text to refer to this. e) Please make a statistic analyze using the answers obtained It does not seem feasible to do a statistic analysis on qualitative interviews. However, we could present a word cloud or table of frequency, ranking the codes that we found most prevalent in the interviews....? f) Please adapt the conclusions to the previous analysis Our conclusion is rather simple, but still important- sharing anxiety is not a known concern among public transportation stakeholders in New South Wales, and therefore they are not developing policies to address it, even though they are working hard to implement numerous autonomous public transport projects. In fact, they are still uncertain about whose responsibility it is to address ridepooling services. Our policy suggestions are aimed at changing this trend. Did this address all of the comments? Was there something that we missed? Thank you again for your time! -The Authors
Round 3
Reviewer 1 Report
Previous interaction did not bring many improvements
Work to be published should follow scientific guidelines and not authors opinions
