Highway Automation: System Modeling for Impacts Analysis

Highway automation technologies have been proposed in an attempt to ameliorate the urban problem of congestion and, to a lesser extent, air pollution. The methodology developed to analyze the impacts of an automated highway system in the Southern California region in 2025 is addressed in this paper. An automated highway system scenario is selected from several alternatives based on sensitivity analyses that allow for variability in network location, total network miles, and market penetration of vehicles equipped with automation features.