NewJerseyMOVES: Implications of Autonomous On-Demand Ridesharing on New Jersey Transit Rail Operations

Abstract

Transportation access in suburban New Jersey is constrained by a persistent first- and last-mile gap between sprawling residential areas and fixed-route commuter rail infrastructure. While autonomous on-demand (AOD) mobility systems offer a flexible alternative to traditional feeder transit, existing implementations do not account for integration with scheduled rail services. This paper presents a rail-integrated extension of the MOVES simulator that combines kiosk-based AOD ridesharing with NJ TRANSIT commuter rail using GTFS-derived network construction, multimodal routing, and rail-aware dispatching. The system is evaluated across representative suburban station environments and compared with a rail-excluded baseline. Results show that incorporating rail significantly expands effective access to the transit network, increases the share of trips served within acceptable time and wait thresholds, and reduces passenger wait times while maintaining fleet efficiency. These findings demonstrate that integrating flexible first-mile service with high-capacity rail can overcome key limitations of both fixed-route transit and point-to-point on-demand mobility in car-oriented regions.