Development and Assessment of Selected Mobility Applications for VII: Principal Findings

This project has shown how connected vehicle systems, based on vehicle-vehicle and vehicle-infrastructure communication and coordination, can support the development of mobility-enhancing applications with the potential to transform the performance of the road transportation system. Three separate mobility-enhancing applications were developed, simulated, and tested, and their expected mobility benefits were estimated using simulations. Cooperative adaptive cruise control was shown to have a high potential for user acceptance, and when applied at the gap settings chosen by representative drivers from the general public, it could double the capacity of a highway lane at full market penetration. Variable speed limits were shown to have the potential to reduce the adverse impacts of highway bottlenecks by increasing the traffic flow capacity of those bottlenecks if they can be implemented with smooth transitions in the speed limit settings. Automated truck platoon control was shown to be technically feasible using DSRC for vehicle-vehicle coordination, with the potential for significant fuel savings from aerodynamic drag reductions.