The Spatial and Transport Impacts of Automated Driving, or STAD, is a joint research project about the implications of the future of accessibility and spatial development of mobility with respect to autonomous driving technologies.

As technologies and trends develop around the topic of automated driving, it becomes crucial for all entities that would be affected by such developments to be prepared for changes in the near future. Having 5 levels of automation identified, the most advanced levels of automated driving (5) as disruptive innovation leading to drastic changes in mobility patterns and even spatial structure of cities and regions.

Much progress has been made in understanding the short term and small scale impacts of less advanced levels of automated driving on driver behavior and traffic flows. However, much needed research into the longer term, indirect and larger scale impacts of more advanced levels of automated driving, on mobility, logistic and residential patterns and spatial-economic structure, is still in its infancy.

Concerning the research methods, high importance was attached to models and data for specific regional use cases and connections to current and future pilot projects. In order to distribute the different research topics, the scientific project approach is based on a coherent set of sub-projects. (SP)

 SP1 will study how automation will change passenger travel and location choice behaviour: if drivers will be able to spend their travel time in a useful way, such as working or sleeping, they may decide to change their travel behaviour in terms of destination or transport mode. They may even decide to change their housing location and live on the countryside while working in the city centre. 

SP2 will study the impacts of automation on logistics and freight transport: truck platooning and automated package distribution will affect freight transport cost, reliability and speed, leading to re-evaluation of supply chain management decisions.

 SP3 will take into account dedicated infrastructure for automated driving, and evaluate different network design in terms of robustness.

SP4 and SP5 have a strong spatial orientation. SP4 will focus on urban quality and safety aspects of driving automation, with particular attention to vulnerable road users. SP5 will focus on the impacts of automated driving on regional development, taking into account the changes in travel and freight transport patterns, multimodal transport networks and paying specific attention to economic impacts. 

SP5 will also study how the expected transport, spatial and economic impacts can be related to agglomeration strength.

SP6 and SP7 will deal with integrated model for the impact of the Automated Driving and case studies respectively.