Fleetowner 5608 Smarterhighways
Fleetowner 5608 Smarterhighways
Fleetowner 5608 Smarterhighways
Fleetowner 5608 Smarterhighways
Fleetowner 5608 Smarterhighways

Making highways smarter

Sept. 3, 2015
Adding intelligence to roadways is one thing; paying for it is quite another

What if highways could communicate information to vehicles, information such as crashes up ahead, surface conditions of the pavement, weather, even animal activity? What if roads could sense traffic and adjust lighting accordingly? 

“As highways get ‘smarter’ in their ability to collect and process data, it should help us to better optimize the roadway system,” says Ronald Gibbons, director of the center for infrastructure-based safety systems at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI).

Data collected via smart highways can also influence the type of pavement needed along specific stretches to improve vehicle traction, an example of the granularity intelligent roadways can potentially offer.

In a project funded by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), VTTI is using what’s called a “sideway-force coefficient routine investigation machine,” or SCRIM for short, mounted on a Volvo VHD 430 model truck that will drive thousands of miles through Florida, Texas, Indiana, and Washington collecting data on roadway friction, cross-slope, macro-texture, grade, temperature, and curvature—all while driving at up to 50 mph.

Those measurements will be cross-referenced with crash data to identify potentially high-risk friction areas. With that data, improvements can then be made to improve roadway friction. The higher the friction, the better the grip a vehicle’s tires will have with the road, notes Gerardo Flintsch, director of VTTI’s center for sustainable transportation infrastructure.

“Higher friction can help a vehicle stop or maneuver its way out of a crash,” he explains. “The continuous friction measurement equipment has the potential to pinpoint pavement sections where the probability of crashes is greater.”

“With one data collection pass on the road, we will collect data that allows us to segment the road network into friction demand categories,” adds Andrew Mergenmeier, FHWA’s senior pavement and materials engineer. “For example, in areas where the potential for conflict is greater, such as tight horizontal curves, this data can inform the need for a countermeasure.”

VTTI’s Gibbons notes that greater data connections between vehicles and the roadway infrastructure itself can take interactions between the two to a whole new level.

“Wheel slip indicators within vehicles indicate the real-time road conditions they are experiencing,” he says. “Now that information can be broadcast by the roadway itself, providing warnings to other vehicles about the conditions ahead.”

Gibbons also points out that the transmission of such data is possible through wireless communication systems. Construction of such a system within the highway network opens up that wheel slip scenario in addition to other data-sharing possibilities for trucking companies and their telematics systems.

For example, the routine exchange of data between truckers and inspectors is ripe for this type of system. 

“More trucks can be more efficiently processed at inspection sites and weigh stations by transmitting information wirelessly at highway speed—in advance of reaching a particular site—instead of having to pull in and manually present paper or information for officers to collect and review,” Doug Johnson, president of Drivewyze, says.

“Even if a truck must pull into a weigh station or inspection site, the automatic transfer of just standard credentials would save processing time,” Johnson adds. “This means officers can spend more time focusing on better-informed inspections and catching potential violators rather than spending time with manual data collection and entry.”

V2I benefits

He points out that drivers and fleets alike spend hours each month manually preparing and submitting paperwork for inspections, permits, etc. One of the biggest upsides to the potential of broader vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) connections is to increase time spent driving on the road with less spent filling out paperwork or waiting to be processed. But, developing V2I systems isn’t as simple as it may look, Johnson notes.

“Today’s mobile technologies and the established commercial communications infrastructure have made V2I feasible and possible, but it is not easy,” he stresses. “It takes a great deal of systems integration work between many government and industry end points. Yet there is so much here where technology can make things more efficient by just automating processes that are currently performed manually.”

Then there are the possible safety improvements such beefed up V2I connections can offer, notes Hesham Rakha, a VTTI research scientist, improvements that also serve to pave the way for the wider use of semi-autonomous and fully autonomous vehicles.

“With regard to intersections, we can make operations safer and more efficient through the sharing of signal phasing and timing, or SPaT, information,” he explains. “Vehicles themselves can make better decisions when a traffic light turns yellow using the information they receive from the controller. They could proceed in a more fuel-efficient manner as well when approaching a red traffic signal.”

On behalf of the Virginia Dept. of Transportation (VDOT), Rakha used highway-based data collection techniques to study trucks and their effects on traffic stream behavior along graded roadway sections. The goal was to determine where truck-only lanes along a crowded stretch of I-81 dissecting the Shenandoah Valley might make the most sense.

Based on Rakha’s research, which included the use of data sensors embedded within VTTI’s unique “Smart Road,”  a 2.2-mi. closed-course test bed located at its research headquarters outside Blacksburg, VA, and truck test vehicles, VDOT chose to add truck lanes between the cities of Roanoke and Christiansburg. When built, that section of I–81 was designed to handle 15% truck volume, but trucks now account for between 20% and 40% of total volume.

“It is very difficult to predict how fast things will change, but I do believe that we will be seeing significant changes in the next five years due to such technology,” Rakha explains. “Given that these changes will involve vehicle connectivity and automation, the drivers will definitely notice.”

Cost factors

VTTI’s Gibbons adds that the municipalities in charge of maintaining smarter roads should notice something else, too, and that is lower costs.

“For example, from an energy standpoint, using concrete versus asphalt can actually result in a 50% lighting energy savings because concrete is a brighter surface than asphalt,” he points out. “Brighter pavement and brighter signage means spending less money on light system output, money municipalities can potentially refocus directly back to road maintenance.”

Yet others contend all this talk of smarter highways is getting way ahead of the most pressing challenge and that is to keep the current roadway network functional.

Last year, the Reason Foundation reported in its Annual Highway Report that while more money is being spent on state highways, there’s been very little progress in improving their condition.

“Many of the easiest repairs and fixes to state highway and bridge systems have already been made and the rate of progress is slowing down,” says David Hartgen, a senior fellow with the group and the lead author of the report. “A widening gap also seems to be emerging between states that are still making improvements and a few states that are really falling behind on highway maintenance and repairs.”

A recent report issued by The Road Information Program (TRIP) determined that more than one-quarter (28%) of the nation’s major urban roads, which includes Interstates, freeways and other arterial routes, contain pavements that are in substandard condition. This provides what the group calls an “unacceptably rough ride” to motorists and costs the average urban driver $516 annually.

Based on data from a report isued by FHWA in 2013 titled Bumpy Roads Ahead: America’s Roughest Rides and Strategies to Make our Roads Smoother, the nationwide annual cost of driving on deteriorated roads totals $109.3 billion for motorists in general.

“The nation’s rough roads stress nerves and cost billions in unnecessary vehicle replacement, repair and fuel costs,” notes Jill Ingrassia, managing director of government relations and traffic safety advocacy for AAA.

TRIP also found that with vehicle travel growth rates returning to pre-recession levels and with the expectation that large truck travel will grow significantly in future years, mounting wear and tear on the nation’s urban roads and highways is expected to increase the cost of needed highway repairs.
The group adds that vehicle travel remained largely unchanged from 2008 to 2013, but it increased 1.7% from 2013 to 2014 and another 3.9% during the first four months of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014.

On top of all that, the amount of commercial truck travel in the U.S. is expected to increase by 72% from now through 2030, TRIP says. This puts pressure on roads that are already overstressed and on the bottom lines of fleets as well.  

According to the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), maintenance and repairs are growing as a portion of overall marginal costs within trucking operational budgets. In 2008, for example, maintenance and repairs made up an average of 6% of motor carriers’ total marginal costs, and by 2013 that figure was 9%, the research group reports. Repairs and maintenance added an average of $0.103/mi. to motor carrier costs in 2008 and $0.148 in 2013, ATRI says.

Roads that are in “poor” condition cost the most to fix, says Rocky Moretti, TRIP’s director of research and policy.

“When a road becomes badly deteriorated, it has to be reconstructed, involving a complete milling and repaving,” he points out. “A properly implemented pavement preservation approach to keeping pavements in good condition has been found to reduce overall pavement lifecycle costs by about one-third over a 25-year period. [Yet] roads that have significant deterioration must be maintained with surface repairs until sufficient funds are available to reconstruct [them], at which time a pavement preservation strategy can be adopted.”

In essence, the further one falls behind on road repairs, the more difficult it is to make improvements, he says. “It’s an argument for making longer-lasting repairs; patches are not long-term solutions,” Moretti stresses.

Robert Poole, director of transportation policy for Reason Foundation, recently argued that upgrading/replacing the nation’s 47,000 mi. of Interstates, along with selective widening, would cost just under $1 trillion. This could feasibly be financed via an electronic tolling system charging 3.5¢ per mile for cars and other light vehicles and 14¢ per mile for large trucks, as long as those toll rates were indexed for inflation.

Electronic tolls

“Two service providers, Bestpass and PrePass Plus, require only a single transponder for trucks to pay tolls electronically in 15 states,” Poole explains. “The trucking company receives a single consolidated bill for all tolls on all toll roads used during each month. Now, major efforts are under way by the toll industry to provide nationwide tolling ‘interoperability’ by 2016. Thereafter, providers like Bestpass and PrePass Plus will be able to offer a single transponder and consolidated billing nationwide.”

By comparison, he adds, heavy trucks pay diesel taxes  equivalent to roughly 7.2¢ per mile on non-tolled Interstates. That jumps to 27.1¢ per mile when diesel taxes are combined with the tolls paid on legacy toll roads.

Poole further argues that such electronic tolling typically consumes only 4 to 5% of revenues to cover administrative expenses compared to the 20 to 40% consumed by traditional cash toll booth stations. The question is whether a value proposition exists for the trucking industry to switch to what Poole calls the “Interstate 2.0” endeavor.

“For understandable reasons, this industry has a long history of opposition to tolling, objecting to double taxation (paying both tolls and fuel taxes for the same highway), and to toll roads often being used by governments as cash cows, charging far more than needed to cover the capital and operating costs of the toll road, and diverting the excess revenue to other purposes,” Poole says.

Yet that line of argument falls flat, at least in the view of the American Trucking Assns. (ATA), one of the industry’s largest trade groups.

“The Reason Foundation’s ‘study’ demonstrates a continued misunderstanding of the trucking industry and intentionally overlooks real issues with tolling,” the organization reports. “Tolling, even electronic tolling, is still much less efficient than the traditional, fuel tax-based user fee system, and we continue to see, despite current safeguards, tolls used for purposes other than maintenance of the roads they’re collected on.   

“We will continue to strongly oppose the imposition of tolls in the Interstate System, particularly now as we’ve seen several states back off plans to erect tolls once the public sees just how bad they are for mobility and efficiency,” ATA stresses. “We continue to believe the best way to finance needed improvements in our infrastructure is through traditional, fuel tax-based user fees."

Will such opposition potentially short circuit broader “smart highway” efforts down the road? Well, that remains to be seen.
 

Building a smart road

Fifteen years ago, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) had an idea: Why not build an actual road to put a host of newfangled technologies—from light pole sensors to connected vehicle systems—through real-world tests, including exposure to a variety of weather conditions?

Thus, the “Smart Road” was born: a closed-loop 2.2-mi. two-lane test-bed that includes three highway bridges, one of which is the tallest state-maintained bridge in Virginia. Well over 17,500 test hours have been logged on the road since it opened in 2000, with testing conducted not only by Virginia Tech engineers but by private corporations (such as General Motors) and government transportation specialists as well.

Features of the Smart Road include:

  • Seventy-five weather-making towers with the capability to produce artificial snow of up to 4 in. per hour (based on suitable weather conditions) create different intensities of rain with varying droplet sizes, and even make fog.
  • Seven roadside equipment units facilitate connected-vehicle communications and two mobile roadside equipment sites.
  • A connected-vehicle-compatible intersection controller model
  • Fourteen pavement sections, including an open-grade friction course, feature in-pavement sensors that detect such factors as moisture, temperature, strain, vibration, and weigh-in-motion data.
  • A zero-crown pavement section is designed for flooded pavement testing.
  • Variable pole spacing is designed to replicate 95% of national highway systems.

VTTI originally started out in 1988 as the Center for Transportation Research with a staff of just 15 and a mission to become a resource for intelligent vehicle and infrastructure research focusing on human factors within driving and burgeoning smart car technology. Today, VTTI employs over 400 personnel and operates from six buildings. The Smart Road was built in partnership with the Virginia Dept. of Transportation.

About the Author

Sean Kilcarr | Editor in Chief

Sean reports and comments on trends affecting the many different strata of the trucking industry -- light and medium duty fleets up through over-the-road truckload, less-than-truckload, and private fleet operations Also be sure to visit Sean's blog Trucks at Work where he offers analysis on a variety of different topics inside the trucking industry.

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