Transportation Infrastructure and Automation Technologies: High Performance Lanes and Dynamic Platoon Control Systems in the Automated Highways of Future Smart Cities
/Abstract
The advent of the autonomous driving technologies has created a crucial need for adaptations in transportation infrastructures, control systems, and management strategies to improve mobility and accessibility in urban regions. However, such adaptations may have adverse impacts on the overall traffic condition of the system. In this research, we first develop a macroscopic analytical model to reveal a paradox: dedicating exclusive lanes to new-technology-equipped vehicles and automating highways in interregional corridors (connecting suburban areas to urban regions) can result in worsening traffic conditions inside an urban region over peaks due to the hypercongestion effect. To minimize the experienced delay in the integrated system of highways and the network, we present a design problem for the optimal number of lanes for the following types of facilities in the interregional corridors: (1) automated highway system (AHS), exclusively provided for the vehicles equipped with cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) technology, i.e., communicant autonomous vehicles (CAVs), (2) high performance lane (HPL), dedicated to vehicles with adaptive cruise control (ACC) technology, i.e., autonomous vehicles (AVs) and CAVs, and (3) conventional lane (CVL), accessible to vehicles with any level of automation technology, i.e., human-driven vehicles (HVs), AVs, and CAVs. We also develop a dynamic platoon control system (PCS) for CAVs in the AHS to keep the inflow of the network optimized over time. The results of the San Francisco case study presented in this paper show that low penetration rates of new automation technologies have no significant effect on the experienced delay in the system. However, a rise in the penetration rate of new technologies can result in a delay reduction of 78% in the highways, which leads to an increase of the delay in the downtown network by 5%, even when the system is optimally designed and controlled. In general, it can be concluded that a rise in the penetration rate of new technologies can have significant positive effects on the overall condition of the integrated system.