Highway Cost Analysis for Platooning of Connected and Autonomous Trucks

Abstract

If connected and autonomous vehicles use highways under current lane management policy, only partial benefit can be reaped from the platooning of advanced vehicles. Agencies may have to update the existing policy in the near future because of the regular presence of connected and autonomous vehicles on the highways. The probable management approaches are likely to affect highway construction, rehabilitation, and fuel consumption cost. This paper studied a range of lane management approaches in terms of truck platooning and estimated construction and rehabilitation costs using existing models. It also developed a probabilistic approach of generating varying degrees of vehicle platooning to estimate fuel consumption in a simulated environment of highway segment. The results showed that, compared with a no-platoon approach, most of the approaches considered reduce construction cost but increase rehabilitation cost for a unit length of a highway. Fuel consumption cost decreases due to truck platooning with all possible approaches. If truck platooning is achieved by adding a separate truck-only lane, the fuel consumption benefits are considerably higher.