Revolutionizing elderly mobility through autonomous demand-responsive transport services

The ageing population presents a global demographic challenge, as elderly mobility declines rapidly due to their lack of stable income and limited physical and cognitive abilities. Autonomous demand-responsive transport emerges as a potential solution to cater to their specific transport needs. To comprehend their acceptance and adoption of autonomous demand-responsive transport, a stated preference survey was conducted, interviewing 232 elderly individuals aged 60 or above in Hong Kong. The design of choice experiments was pivoted with respect to revealed trips from the surveyed elderly to simulate realistic choice scenarios. Using the collected data, logit models were developed to identify contributory factors influencing their mode choice between their currently chosen alternative and the new transport mode. The results indicate that travel fare, walk time, on-street wait time, in-vehicle travel time, seat availability, and the provision of on-board staff are the significant attributes. Notably, seat availability possesses the highest impact among all attributes. It is therefore recommended that seats should be reserved in conjunction with the demand-responsive service. An unobserved heterogeneity among the elderly is identified in the provision of on-board staff. About 35% of them hold a negative perception of this arrangement while others were more likely to adopt an on-board staff member for safety concerns. The study highlights that the elderly were hesitant to shift to autonomous demand-responsive transport due to their concerns about autonomous driving and digital proficiency. As such, it is recommended that the implementation of autonomous demand-responsive transport should be progressive in a transit-oriented city.