Time Benefits of New Transportation Technologies: The Case of Highway Automation

This paper examines the role of travel time in the choice of transportation technologies. First, the components of travel time are introduced and compared among alternative modes. Next, a series of highway automation concepts is created, and the time benefits of each are discussed. Finally, the effects of automation on highway performance are modeled and evaluated, first looking at the space efficiency of highways, then measuring the benefits of increased capacity and increased velocity.The paper demonstrates that even simple forms of highway automation can provide important travel time benefits. Automated low-speed and stationary merging can reduce queueing at the entrances to bridges, tunnels and other bottlenecks. And “mini-highways” can reduce delays crossing urbanized areas.Highway automation may achieve great benefits within a few niche markets. Butthese markets are likely in congested existing cities -- where construction of new conventional highways is all but prohibited -- rather than radically transformed “cities of the future.”