Implication of Privately Owned Autonomous Vehicles Adoption in Leeds using System Dynamic Approach

The adoption of autonomous vehicles (AVs) in the UK is potentially rising in the future with no exception in Leeds. With the Leeds City Council aiming to tackle climate change through their transport strategies, the adoption of AVs might introduce positive or negative impacts. Meanwhile, AVs adoption in Leeds is still very little discussed in the transport strategy document. Through the system dynamic approach, the adoption of AVs in Leeds is analyzed based on four main transport strategies targets. Four main scenarios and a sensitivity analysis have been simulated using VENSIM. The result shows that AVs implementation potentially reduces the total vehicle emission with the zero emission power grid and reduces traffic accidents in Leeds which involves SDG 3 and 7. However, a traffic accidents spike should be anticipated in the lower AVs market penetration. Meanwhile, the AVs adoption might generate more traffic where the empty cruising AVs ability can result in additional trips which make the road more congested. Therefore, the local government should provide better alternatives to private vehicles (PV) and implement policies to discourage PV trips which are beneficial to SDG 11. A drastic policy and huge cost might be involved to achieve the sustainability goals.