Sustainable Mobility and Automated Vehicle: Challenges for a Desirable Future

Dear Colleagues,

For governments, organizations, and citizens, the sustainable future of transport means less congested, less polluted, and more accessible cities.

Technological and social innovations can help to shape mobility, leading towards an intelligent citizen-centric, inclusive, efficient, safe, environmentally friendly, and resilient transport system serving the general interest (see European project “AVENUE” for sustainability assessment of AV deployment). Examples of these innovations include the integration of automated vehicles into intelligent transport systems (ITS) to promote intermodal transportation, the improvement of public transport, and an ever-increasing number of shared and/or alternative modes (micro-transit, and new transport services such as on-demand transport). The dynamics of urban transport are thus leading humans to imagine shared mobility systems offering real, tangible, but also high-tech innovation.

However, is this future desirable? Efforts to test technological innovations are underway, and the feedback is promising. However, we must still inquire: What are the impacts of these new services? How can we measure them?

Does the future proposed by the shared automated vehicle meet users' expectations? Does it make a social contribution that helps reduce inequalities and meet the need for inclusiveness? Are these services a response to the environmental challenges of transport? How can the created value be used to serve the general interest?

This Special Issue examines the challenges ahead as automated vehicles enter cities. It will also be an opportunity to discuss incentive structures to ensure that society adopts these innovations in the best possible manner. It is also necessary to develop strategies which discourage or restrict private cars to promote public transport bicycle but also provide a mobility offer like automated vehicle integrated in a MaaS which could be able to change the behavior without constraints.

Original research articles and analyses are welcome, whether based on models, data analysis, surveys, or case study applications. Research areas may include (but are not limited to):

1. Inclusive mobility:
   1. Accessibility for disabled persons
   2. Digital illiteracy
   3. Territorial inequalities
   4. Gendered inequalities
   5. Intermodality with active mode
2. Affordability:
   1. Social welfare
   2. Sustainable business models
   3. Willingness to pay and modal shift
3. Behavioral acceptance:
   1. Transformations in individual behavior and social practice
   2. Pull or Push strategies to enable acceptance
4. Environmental efficiency:
   1. First mile/last mile logistics
   2. Demand Responsive Transport
5. Governance to serve the general interest:
   1. Data governance
   2. Stakeholder governance

Prof. Dr. Isabelle Nicolaï
Dr. Julie Bulteau
Prof. Dr. Guy Fournier
Guest Editors

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• automated vehicle
• inclusive mobility
• transportation governance
• MaaS
• affordability
• behavioral acceptance
• local territory
• social innovation
• intermodal transport
• active modes
• environmental efficiency