Autonomous Taxicabs in Berlin - A Spatiotemporal Analysis of Service Performance

Autonomous taxi (AT) fleets have the potential to take over a significant amount of traffic handled nowadays by conventionally driven vehicles (CDV). In this paper, we simulate a city-wide replacement of private cars with AT fleets of various sizes.The simulation model comprises microscopic demand for all private car trips in Berlin (including incoming and outgoing traffic), out of which the internal ones are exclusively served by ATs. With a fleet of 100,000 vehicles the city will be served at an appropriate level of service. Waiting times for an AT will generally be higher in the outskirts where the distance in between rides is higher. Additional traffic originating from ATs driving empty to pick up the next customer is here also expected to be considerably higher. Further results also suggest that a reduction of the service area to cover only the city center might be more efficient and that additional demand for AT services by people switching from public transit needs to be met by a proportionally bigger fleet size.