The conceptual framework has been sharpened by summarizing the potential impacts of AVs on accessibility (and accessibility differences across society) based on a literature review conducted by the authors. The methodological framework has focused on the space-time accessibility models and on their adjustments to the specific project purpose. Specifically, the access to fixed activities has been integrated with the access to discretionary opportunities in the definition of a variant of the traditional space-time model.

Two rural and remote study areas have been chosen to develop AV-based supply scenarios and analyze their potential impacts on accessibility. These are the municipalities of Mühlwald (in South Tyrol) and Sooß (in Lower Austria). They have been selected based on their small size (less than 1,500 inhabitants) lack of in-situ services and opportunities, limited availability of public transport services, and presence of relevant socio-demographic groups like large households, women, elderly and minors. A travel-diary survey has been conducted on telephone with the citizenship of both municipalities in autumn 2022 (involving over 220 participants in total). This has allowed collecting data on the current space, time and transport constraints of a sample of residents, which is the basis for the calculation of space-time accessibility at the individual level. Anonymized survey data are available for consultation.

The AV-based supply scenarios have been designed following a two-step process. In the first step, the project team has developed a set of conceptual use cases derived from the scientific literature regarding the usage of AVs in the rural domain. These use cases have reflected on the recurrent schemes and their key characteristics. These have been presented at the CORP Conference 2022 in Vienna. In the second step, the conceptual schemes have been transformed into concrete supply scenarios for the study areas. For this purpose, the team has set a design methodology based on the intertwined estimation of the transport performances, agency cost and service capacity of the scenarios. Each scenario has been designed according to a key logic: the cost saving generated by transport automation are reinvested to improve the transport performances as much as possible, while considering the today´s operating cost budget, public transport demand and service capacity as fixed. Five scenarios have been developed and quantified for the two study areas.