Truck Autonomy Maybe The Key To Reducing Congestion And Increasing Safety For Everyone

The article “Could Micro-tolling Be The Answer To The Gas Tax And Traffic Optimization?,” observed that the current transportation system is badly out of economic balance because there is no market mechanism which reconciles demand and supply. The predictable results are points of oversupply (”empty roads at 3 am”) and shortages (”rush hour congestion”) in a situation where average utilization of the road network is very low.  The costs which are enabled by “free” access to the road network include:

1. Safety:  The increased congestion during peak hours increases the risk for accidents due to traffic density.
2. Cost:   Capacity planning is often driven by the level of measured congestion, so roads are built based on peak utilization.
3. Trip Time:  Congestion increases “dead” time on the road which could be used for more productive pursuits.
4. Road Efficiency: The efficiency of a road reduces as one approaches critical density points. Rush hour forces the road into inefficient traffic flows.
5. Economic Opportunity Cost: Since everyone accesses this shared resource without knowledge of the economic needs of the other parties, there are uncounted misallocations of this shared resource.  As an example, a retiree who may not be sensitive to arrival 15 mins later can easily create congestion which causes a bus containing 50 people to miss an airplane flight. 

The original article explores using the automotive communication technologies (V2X) to build a micro-tolling economic model to solve these problems.  Technologically, there are no major issues with the implementation of an “advanced tolling” solution.  However, this structure has two significant short term challenges: 

• Infrastructure:  One must have cars equipped with V2X technology, smart roads which support V2I technology, and a cloud infrastructure to manage the whole process. For the passenger car fleet, this is a large investment and will take some time to come to fruition.
• Consumer Behavior: To be effective, consumer behavior must change based on pricing signals (tolls or credits), and this is not always possible. As the electric utility industry has learned with demand response methods, consumers have limited bandwidth for responsiveness around pricing which provides incremental benefit to them directly. However, they will accept automation which helps drive the right behavior (Ex: Nest Product). 

Thus, when autonomous vehicles are viable and proliferated, both of these issues are easily solved. However, in the near term, the commercial trucking market is a very interesting place to start employing these models for more immediate benefit.  How might this work ? 

1. Congestion Based Credits:   Build an incentive structure to reward shifting cargo to lower utilization points. This can be in the form of toll-credits or direct dollars.
2. Smart Roads:    Major commercial corridors (a small subset of the whole road network)  can be enabled for detecting and rewarding congestion-based signals. 
3. Smart Commercial Vehicles:  Enable the deployment of advanced commercial vehicles which provide higher safety for night time travel through ADAS and communication technology. Note, given the cost of a commercial vehicle, these costs are much more easily absorbed as compared to a passenger vehicle. 
4. Funding:  Look to state DOTs for funding this infrastructure investment. The argument is that the increased utilization reduces the need for building more road capacity and aids safety.
5. Insurance: Given the rise of safety conditions based on traveling in lower-traffic timeframes and with advanced ADAS technology, commercial participants should see lower insurance rates. State DOTs should consider encouraging this behavior with the benefit of a state-based insurance backstop similar to hurricane insurance to control the issue of nuclear verdicts.

Impact and Safety Argument:

If this works, non time sensitive commercial traffic will move into times of low utilization (very likely early in the morning).  In ordinary circumstances, this would be considered less safe because humans do not function well in the early morning. However, the counter-argument is that advanced ADAS systems combined with smart roads that provide advanced crash information can be used to mitigate this risk significantly.  Further, advanced autonomous solutions such as described in “Will Truck Convoying Be The First Viable Commercial Application For AV Technology ? are enabled in the context of low traffic density situations. 

Why are government incentives required ?

In the context of “free” access today, an incentive is required to shift behavior in the commercial trucking industry. If the structure works as intended, the investment in the incentive structures are funded by lower congestion for everyone, a decreased need to expand the civil infrastructure, and increased safety for everyone. Overall, the increased safety characteristics of truck autonomy systems can be used to enable fuller utilization of the road network.

Related Articles:

1.  Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Contribution To Autonomous Vehicles
2. What Can Amazon
   AMZN And Hilton Teach Uber About Transportation
3.  Will Truck Convoying Be The First Viable Commercial Application For AV Technology ?
4. If The FCC Can Sell Communication Spectrum, Should DOT Be Able To Sell Transportation Spectrum ?

For those who would like more detailed technical papers, please visit my SAE work.