Are we ready? : Swedish road operators readiness for automated vehicles

Sammanfattning: The European Union as well as Governments all around the world,including the Swedish Government, are putting a lot of time, money andeffort into facilitating the implementation of Automated Vehicles (AVs).The majority of these efforts tend to focus on either the technicalaspects, action plans or the legal scope. However, little attention isbeing drawn to the practical implications of these efforts. Hence, this thesis investigates the road operators’ willingness to act and their readiness in regards to data and information provision for AVs, as well as how the readiness can be improved. In particular, focus is geared towards the three largest road operators in Sweden: the city of Stockholm, the city of Gothenburg and the Swedish Transport Administration. The primary segments of data consists of information gathered through semi-structured in-depth interviews and benchmarking against international road operators. The results show a gap between the official visions of being at the forefront in automated mobility, and the actual practical implementations of these visions in the road operator organisation's. The author assigns this gap to a lack of incitements, decision-making,and monetary assets. Moreover, the findings suggest a correlationbetween the approach towards automated mobility within the organisationsand the actual level of readiness. This correlation is intensifiedduring the second data collection, when benchmarking international road operators against the Swedish. Further, the author underlines theimportance of managing this gap in order to achieve the strong coordination needed to reach the set up goals. The paper conclusively suggests, by comparing how road operators work with such matters in theNetherlands, Norway and Finland, how to overcome such obstacles.