The United States Department of Transportation has initiated a Connected Vehicle Pilot Deployment effort. Local transportation agencies, cities and municipalities, and private industry will be invited to submit cooperative pilot proposals for funding and support. These pilot programs will produce operational deployments that will harness the capabilities of connected mobile and wireless technologies to provide mobility, safety, and environmental benefits. The USDOT will seek partnerships among State and local transportation agencies, commercial vehicle operators, private companies, and others to select and deploy appropriate connected vehicle solutions from across all elements of surface transportation (such as transit, freeway, arterial, parking facilities, tollways, or ports) to address local needs and performance goals. The local partners will select from among many beneficial applications to address their most pressing needs. Now I will go through the I-876 Productivity Corridor sample scenario.
The I-876 is a 112 mile multi-state facility that connects ports and intermodal facilities in the Northeast. The I-876 is characterized by heavy truck movement among cities and facilities, and faces competition based on travel time reliability from other regional freight corridors.
The freight corridor’s stakeholders have identified several challenges that they would like to solve. In terms of freight productivity, heavily congested freeways interfere with timely and reliable freight movement. This hinders economic development and leads to under-utilization of freight facilities, infrastructure, and mobile assets. Additionally, frequent empty moves exacerbate the corridor’s under-utilization problem. Within the corridor, port, airport, and intermodal access are subject to surge demand and long waiting times. Mobility could be improved if these busy times were observed and communicated to drivers. In the realm of safety, truck-vehicle incidents occur in hilly merge section near interchanges, and truck-involved crashes caused by lane changing and blind spots are a frequent occurrence.
The local stakeholders then set key improvement target for their transportation issues. They aim to reduce freight vehicle travel times by 17%, the number of wasted/empty trips by 15%, and the number of truck-related incidents by 30%.
In order to improve freight reliability, the stakeholders select the Signal Priority (Transit and Freight), Freight-Specific Dynamic Travel Planning and Performance, and Drayage Optimization mobility applications.
The stakeholders then select the Curve Speed Warning vehicle-to-infrastructure safety application, the Blind Spot/Lane Change Warning (BSW/LCW) and Do Not Pass Warning (DNPW) vehicle-to-vehicle safety applications, and the Smart Truck Parking smart roadside application, all in an effort to improve truck safety.
This slide presents the six applications selected by the stakeholders for deployment in I-876 corridor. The next slides show how these applications are projected to work in concert to improve freight productivity and truck safety.
This slide demonstrates the synergistic truck safety impacts that these applications would produce. Here, we see a truck employing the Smart Truck Parking application to find a parking spot. The truck also has CSW, DNPW, and LCW applications activated, helping to protect the truck driver and nearby motorists. These applications will reduce the number of incidents and crashes, improve freight reliability, and improve corridor mobility through the use of advanced and improved freight data.
This slide provides an illustration of the combined effect of freight reliability applications within the I-876 freight corridor. Using applications such as FRATIS, DRG-OPT, and FSP will result in a 20% decrease in late arrival of goods, a reduced number of empty/wasted trips, optimization of trucking based on cargo demand and need, and signal optimization to ensure quick access to intermodal facilities.
The integrated deployment of the selected freight applications has a noticeably positive effect on the I-876 corridor. Technological applications support both vehicle-to-infrastructure and vehicle-to-vehicle deployments. Roadside infrastructure supports electronic inspections and safety inspections. Drayage movements have been dynamically optimized, intermodal facility wait times are now measured and shared throughout the fleet, and traffic signals prioritization and gate demand measurement at facilities ensure a smooth flow of goods.
