Freight Transportation and Highway Automation: Research on Advanced Technologies for Goods Movement as an Integral Part of the PATH Program

The Program on Advanced Technology for the Highway (PATH), has been established in response to funding by the United States Congress and the California Legislature to demonstrate how "high technology" might be applied to improve highway transportation. PATH's goal, in the short run, is to implement technologies which promise significant relief of acute problemsincluding traffic congestion, air pollution and energy use. Alternative systems of vehicle guidance and control, navigation, propulsion, and communication will be studied and/or developed. The impacts of these systems on highway travel, transportation, the economy and society will be predicted. Researchers envision a new generation of highway transportation ultimately evolving out of these experiments and others like them.