Trucks

Developing Improved Truck Passenger Car Equivalent Values at Signalized Intersections

Alexander Skabardonis
Dowling, Richard
Kiattikomol, Vasin
Safi, Chirag
2014

This paper describes the methodology and findings for developing improved passenger car equivalent (PCE) factors for trucks at signalized intersections on the basis of field data and simulation modeling. The Highway Capacity Manual 2010 (HCM 2010) assumes a single PCE value of 2.00 for trucks at traffic signals. The proposed truck PCE values are sensitive to the proportion of trucks, truck type, and intersection’s approach grade. It is recommended that the current HCM 2010 approach of computing the heavy vehicle and grade effects on saturation flow rates independently be replaced with a...

Assessment of the Applicability of Cooperative Vehicle-Highway Automation Systems (CVHAS) to Bus Transit and Intermodal Freight : Case Study Feasibility Analyses in the Metropolitan Chicago Region

Shladover, Steven
2008

This report presents the results of its performance assessment of the feasibility of applying cooperative vehicle- highway automation systems (CVHAS) to bus transit and freight movements in the metropolitan Chicago area. CVHAS are systems that provide driving control assistance or fully automated driving and are based on information about the vehicle's driving environment that can be received by communication from other vehicles or from the infrastructure, as well as from their own on-board sensors. The Chicago Central Area is equipped with rail transit, commuter rail and bus transit...

Predicting Lane-by-Lane Flows and Speeds for Freeway Segments

Sasahara, Fabio
Staichak Carvalho, Luan Guilherme
Chowdhury, Tanay Datta
Jerome, Zachary
Elefteriadou, Lily
Alexander Skabardonis
2020

The Highway Capacity Manual is a major reference for evaluating the capacity and quality of service of road facilities. However, it holds the assumption that lanes perform equally, which can result in inaccuracies in performance estimation. The main purpose of this research is to develop a series of models for estimating flows and speeds by lane for various types of freeway segments, including basic, merge, and diverge types. These models consider the demand-to-capacity ratio, the presence of trucks, grade, and the presence of upstream and downstream ramps. To predict lane performance...

Micro-Simulation of Truck Platooning with Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control: Model Development and a Case Study

Ramezani, Hani
Shladover, Steven
Lu, Xiao-Yun
Altan, Osman D.
2018

Cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) systems have the potential to improve traffic flow and fuel efficiency, but these effects are challenging to estimate. This paper reports the development of a micro-simulation model to represent these impacts for heavy trucks using CACC when they share a freeway with manually driven passenger cars. The simulation incorporates automated truck-following models that have been derived from experimental data recorded on heavy trucks driven under CACC, adaptive cruise control (ACC), and conventional cruise control (CC). The simulation includes other...

Calibration of Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) Using Real Heavy-Duty Truck Data

Ramezani, Hani
Lu, Xiao-Yun
Shladover, Steven
2019

Heavy duty trucks are one of the major sources of energy consumption in transportation sector. In order to reduce environmental impacts of heavy duty trucks, some strategies, such as truck platooning or mileage pricing, have been evaluated. The evaluation of the effectiveness of these strategies depends on how accurately fuel consumption is estimated. The Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) has been extensively applied to estimate environmental impacts of traffic flow including heavy duty trucks. In spite of frequent applications, there are not many studies to compare MOVES outputs...

Calibration of Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES) to Incorporate Effect of Truck Platooning

Ramezani, Hani
Lu, Xiao-Yun
Shladover, Steven
2019

Truck platooning is one of the Connected and Automated Vehicle technologies that primarily aims to reduce fuel consumption. Recent experimental studies measured fuel saving for limited combinations of platoon position, gap and speed because conducting these experiments, even in a small scale, is costly. The results of the experiments provide a valuable understanding of energy consumption impacts of truck platooning; however they are not sufficient for comprehensive impact predictions because in the real world, speed profiles will be experienced that have not been tested in the experiments...

Operational Concepts for Truck Maneuvers with Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control

Nowakowski, Christopher
Thompson, Deborah
Shladover, Steven E.
Kailas, Aravind
Lu, Xiao-Yun
2016

Cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) has been loosely defined in recent literature to represent a wide variety of vehicle-following control concepts, and when trucks are discussed, CACC is often used synonymously with platooning. This paper discusses the similarities and differences between CACC and platooning and provides a more precise functional description of CACC operations for trucks. CACC operations include not only the steady state cruising mode but also the maneuvers needed to join vehicles together and separate them when a vehicle needs to leave a CACC string or when the...

Heavy Vehicle Automation: Human Factors Lessons Learned

Nowakowski, C.
Shladover, Steven E.
Tan, H. -S.
2015

Although passenger car automation has captured the public's attention in recent years, heavy truck automation has also been a major research topic around the world. In the U.S., the California PATH program at U.C. Berkeley has been engaged in heavy vehicle driver assistance and automation research for trucks, buses, and snow removal equipment for over 15 years. Until recently, much of the human factors work in the field has been limited to driving simulations because the state of the technology is only just now reaching the level of maturity required to move beyond pure research. Despite...

Automated Truck Platoon Control and Field Test

Lu, Xiao-Yun
Shladover, Steven E.
Meyer, Gereon
Beiker, Sven
2014

This chapter presents the results of experiments on coordinated automatic longitudinal control of a platoon of three Class 8 tractor-trailer trucks, using 5.9 GHz DSRC with 100 ms update intervals for coordination. The trucks were tested not only in constant-speed cruising conditions, but also through acceleration and deceleration profiles, up and down grades, and in platoon join and split maneuvers using the DSRC coordination. These tests showed good vehicle following accuracy, ride quality and platoon stability. The desired gaps between the trucks were varied between 10 and 4 m to...

Automated Truck Platoon Control

Lu, Xiao-Yun
Shladover, Steven E.
2011

This report shows a successful application of 5.9 GHz DSRC with 100 ms update intervals to coordinate the automatic longitudinal control of a platoon of three Class 8 tractor-trailer trucks. The trucks were tested not only in constant-speed cruising conditions, but also through acceleration and deceleration profiles, up and down grades, and in platoon join and split maneuvers using the DSRC coordination. These tests showed acceptable vehicle following accuracy, ride quality and platoon stability. The gaps between the trucks were varied between 10 m and 4 m to evaluate the effects of...