International audienceAdvances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) allow the transportation community to foresee dramatic improvements for the incoming years in terms of a more efficient, environmental friendly and safe traffic management. In that context, new ITS paradigms like Cooperative Systems (C-ITS) enable an efficient traffic state estimation and traffic control. C-ITS refers to three levels of cooperation between vehicles and infrastructure: (i) equipped vehicles with Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) adjusting their motion to surrounding traffic conditions; (ii) information exchange with the infrastructure; (iii) vehicle-to-vehicle communication. Therefore, C-ITS makes it possible to go a step further in providing real time information and tailored control strategies to specific drivers. As a response to an expected increasing penetration rate of these systems, traffic managers and researchers have to come up with new methodologies that override the classic methods of traffic modeling and control. In this paper, we discuss some potentialities of C-ITS for traffic management with the methodological issues following the expansion of such systems. Cooperative traffic models are introduced into an open-source traffic simulator. The resulting simulation framework is robust and able to assess potential benefits of cooperative traffic control strategies in different traffic configurations

Autonomous cars controlled by an artificial intelligence are increasingly being integrated in the transport portfolio of cities, with strong repercussions for the design and sustainability of the built environment. This paper sheds light on the urban transition to autonomous transport, in a threefold manner. First, we advance a theoretical framework to understand the diffusion of autonomous cars in cities, on the basis of three interconnected factors: social attitudes, technological innovation and urban politics. Second, we draw upon an in-depth survey conducted in Dublin (1,233 respondents), to provide empirical evidence of (a) the public interest in autonomous cars and the intention to use them once available, (b) the fears and concerns that individuals have regarding autonomous vehicles and (c) how people intend to employ this new form of transport.Third, we use the empirics generated via the survey as a stepping stone to discuss possible urban futures, focusing on the changes in urban design and sustainability that the transition to autonomous transport is likely to trigger. Interpreting the data through the lens of smart and neoliberal urbanism, we picture a complex urban geography characterized by shared and private autonomous vehicles, human drivers and artificial intelligences overlapping and competing for urban spaces.

Shared mobility-on-demand systems can improve the efficiency of urban mobility through reduced vehicle ownership and parking demand. However, some issues in their implementations remain open, most notably the issue of rebalancing non-occupied vehicles to meet geographically uneven demand, as is, for example, the case during the rush hour. This is somewhat alleviated by the prospect of autonomous mobility-on-demand systems, where autonomous vehicles can relocate themselves; however, the proposed relocation strategies are still centralized and assume all vehicles are a part of the same fleet. Furthermore, ride-sharing is not considered, which also has an impact on rebalancing, as already occupied vehicles can also potentially be available to serve new requests simultaneously. In this paper we propose a reinforcement learning-based decentralized approach to vehicle relocation as well as ride request assignment in shared mobility-on-demand systems. Each vehicle autonomously learns its behaviour, which includes both rebalancing and selecting which requests to serve, based on its local current and observed historical demand. We evaluate the approach using data on taxi use in New York City, first serving a single request by a vehicle at a time, and then introduce ride-sharing to evaluate its impact on the learnt rebalancing and assignment behaviour.