Evaluating Alternative Operations Strategies to Improve Travel Time ...

SHRP 2 L11: Final Report
focuses of the 2010-2014 U.S. Department of Transportation ITS Strategic Research Plan is to
fully develop the capabilities of Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII). Existing applications are
mostly based on the need to survive a crash, whereas future applications will focus on the ability to
avoid a crash. Future vehicles will supplement or override driver control when necessary. The
integration of several technologies will make the communication of vehicles and infrastructure
possible.
In the same line of technologies, the concept of shared smart cars will also be part of most urban
areas and large-scale-trip-attracting developments such as airports and amusement parks. In these
applications, the share smart car concept makes carpooling and conventional transit more effective,
by solving the "last mile” problem.
Regarding renewable fuel sources, the increase in electric and hybrid vehicles will follow the
changes in funding sources. The additional cost associated with toll roads and congestion pricing
on the top of gas taxes will lead to a shift from fossil-based vehicles. Hydrogen fuel will also
appear as an environmentally friendly alternative to fossil-based fuels, especially in Europe and
Asia. In North America, bio-diesel consumption will be widespread and will help offset the pricing
costs for roadway users.
In addition to technological innovations, future concepts of “smart” and “compact” growth and
transportation planning will emerge. Integrated technologies will support this vision of the future,
but, the integration of ideas and lifestyle rethinking will be the main drivers of this visionary
future. As noted earlier, web and mobile applications will be the roadway user’s comprehensive
data and information center. Radical changes in land-use patterns will be observed. Commuters
will live closer to job locations and related activities. With the full deployment of telecommuting
capabilities, suburban areas will see more “business centers” where workers that live nearby will
go to work, regardless of their employer location. Government will also support people living
within a certain distance of their place of employment. With that, miles traveled between jobs and
housing will reduce dramatically, having a positive impact to travel-time reliability.
The least-sustainable suburban communities will be redesigned into work-leisure areas where
“community-gathering” spaces will be created nearby residential neighborhoods. Walkable social
activities will transform once old cheap land in the suburbs. (11) The actionable future needs to
combine multimodal transit, telecommuting, ridesharing, demand management, land use, market
forces, pricing policies, technology, and a mind shift in roadway users’ approaches to traveling.
In the future, ITS will need to inform and assist all trips imaginable on all roads and via all modes
of travel. All of the elements needed to make driverless cars – radar, automatic pilot software,
computing power, wireless communications and, of course, navigation systems that know where
you’re going are technologically feasible, and in many cases are even available commercially.
Even without collective action, driverless technology will advance. The reason is that decades of
experience have shown that we will pay for car safety. It is not hard to envision a gradual
(12, 13)
evolution as computers stealthily take on more and more of the driving chores.
In the future, bicycles will play an important role on improving mobility. Dynamic routing, bike
sharing and distributed data sensing are some of the innovations that will take place in order to
give roadway users comparable technology and information available across different modes. A
trip to the grocery shop will no longer involve one mode of transportation only. Shared used of
different modes will allow the shopper to use public transportation or lighter personal
transportation (scooters, bicycle…) to go shopping and then use a smart car to bring bags back
home. The following path will be a reality:
OPERATIONS STRATEGIES AND TREATMENTS TO IMPROVE TRAVEL-TIME RELIABILITY Page 91