CHAPTER 14

REGIONAL MOBILITY IMPACTS ASSESSMENT

OF HIGHWAY AUTOMATION

MARK A. MILLER, ANNE BRESNOCK, STEVEN E. SHLADOVER, AND

EDWARD H. LECHNER

1. INTRODUCTION

Urban traffic congestion and air pollution are crucial issues in most metropolitan
areas, but are more acute in Southern California than in most other North Ameri-
can regions. The PATH Program at the Institute of Transportation Studies, Univer-
sity of California, Berkeley and the Southern California Association of
Governments (SCAG) have investigated some of the long-term regional impacts
that could result from implementation of advanced highway technologies (automat-
ion and electrification) in the Los Angeles area. This chapter focuses on the evalu-
ation of mobility impacts of highway automation technologies applied to portions
of the Southern California freeway network in 2025.

MARK A. MILLER • California PATH Program, University of California, Berkeley, California 94804.
ANNE BRESNOCK • California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, California 91768. STEVEN
E. SHLADOVER • California PATH Program, University of California, Berkeley, California 94804.
EDWARD H. LECHNER • Science Applications International Corporation, Systems Control Technol-
ogy Group, Los Altos, California 94022; present address: Jakes Associates, Inc., San Jose, California
95112.

Automated Highway Systems, edited by Ioannou. Plenum Press, New York, 1997.

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294 M. A. MILLER et at.

Highway automation, or the Automated Highway System (AHS), appears to

be just about the only option available to make a substantial contribution toward
relieving congestion without imposing serious mobility restrictions. The basic idea
behind AHS is that by use of automatic control technology it should be possible to
overcome the performance limitations of human drivers that significantly limit both
the capacity and the safety of the present-day surface transportation system. The
automated system should enable road vehicles to travel substantially closer to-
gether than they do today, producing significant increases in the throughput of the
roadway infrastructure.
The AHS would represent a dramatic change from the operation of today's
road system in terms of capacity (or productivity) and safety as well as in the
driver's perception of the travel experience. Such dramatic changes give rise to
many uncertainties, making it difficult to predict the consequences of AHS im-
plementation with high confidence. However, the initial explorations of possible
AHS impacts have appeared promising enough to justify further explorations.
This is, however, clearly an area of high potential risks as well as high potential
paybacks.
The uncertainties surrounding AHS cover a wide range of subject areas:

• Technical performance
• System-level reliability and safety
• Direct transportation system impacts (congestion)
• User acceptability of the automated driving experience
• Capital and operating costs
• Indirect transportation impacts (such as energy and air quality)
• Long-term transportation/land use interaction effects
• Liability and legal issues

Of these, primarily the issues of technical performance have been addressed in most
previous research on AHS. Some preliminary studies of the reliability and safety
issues are currently under way, while this chapter addresses the direct transporta-
tion system impacts. A major study of the human factors and user acceptability
issues is also under way. The other topics appear to be even more difficult to ad-
dress, requiring extensions beyond the scope of validity of currently available mod-
eling tools and data.
In 1993, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) initiated a series of
I-year studies under its Precursor Systems Analyses (PSA) of Automated Highway
Systems to promote research into the issues and risks associated with AHS. The
PSA studies investigated both technical and nontechnical issues: technical areas
included lateral and longitudinal control, automated check-in and check-out re-
quirements, malfunction management, roadway infrastructure deployability, and
roadway and vehicle operational analysis; nontechnical areas included legal and
liability issues, environmental issues, equity, funding, and user acceptance.
Since the conclusion of the PSA set of research projects, the next phase of AHS
work has begun within the collaborative framework of the National Automated