A growing literature suggests that widespread travel conducted through driverless\nconnected and automated vehicles (CAVs) accessed as a service, in contrast to those personally\nowned, could have significant impacts on the sustainability of urban transportation. However, it is\nunclear how the general public currently considers willingness to travel in driverless vehicles, and\nif they would be more comfortable doing so in one personally owned or one accessed as a service.\nTo address this, we collected travel survey data by intercepting respondents on discretionary or social\ntrips to four popular destinations in a medium-size U.S. city in the spring of 2017. After collecting\ndata on how the respondent reached the survey site and the tripâ??s origin and destination, survey\nadministrators then asked if respondents would have been willing to make their current trip in either a\npersonally-owned driverless vehicle or through a driverless vehicle service. Over one-third expressed\nwillingness to use both forms, while 31% were unwilling to use either. For those that considered only\none, slightly more favored the personally-owned model. Consideration of an existing mobility service\nwas consistently a positive and significant predictor of those that expressed willingness to travel in a\ndriverless vehicle, while traveling downtown negatively and significantly influenced consideration\nof at least one form of driverless vehicle. These findings highlight the diverse public views about the\nprospect of integration of CAVs in transportation systems and raise questions about the assumption\nthat travelers to central city locations would be early adopters of automated vehicle mobility services.
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