An Automated Highway System Dedicated to Inter-City Trucking: Design Options, Operating Concepts, and Deployment

Abstract

The concept of automated highway systems (AHS) has been primarily motivated by the rapidly worsening traffic congestion on metropolitan highways and the potential of AHS for drastically increasing vehicle throughput in the existing right-of-way. The overwhelming majority of the research has been focused on automobile-AHS. This paper focuses on the automation of inter-city trucking for the purpose of increasing trucking productivity, of which vehicle throughput is only one of many factors. In the AHS literature, various operating concepts have been developed for an "end-state AHS," but little attention has been paid to the critical issue of how to realize such ultimate systems through a planned sequence of deployment steps. We believe that truck-AHS operating concepts and their deployment sequences must be developed with a needs-driven and technology-steered approach. We first identify the needs of the long-haul trucking industry and the major concerns of key stakeholders. A major need of the long-haul trucking industry is to increase the productivity of its drivers and trucks. A major desire of transportation agencies is to help that industry increase its productivity in a safe and efficient manner but without sacrificing either safety or the infrastructure. A major desire of the driving public is safety. Based on customer needs, stakeholder concerns, and available or promising truck-automation technologies, we then develop design options for several key aspects of truck-AHS operations. After comparing the merits of these options, we develop system operating concepts and deployment sequences to satisfy the customer needs.