Benefits of travel time savings by truck platooning in Korean freeway networks

Abstract

Truck platooning is a promising strategy to not only reduce the workload of truck drivers but also to increase the efficiency of freight transportation. In addition, truck platooning is expected to contribute to the increase in highway capacity, which causes changes in travel demand and travel time patterns. The reliable identification of the impacts of truck platooning based on a scientific and systematic approach is a fundamental task for implementing truck platooning in practice and maximizing its effectiveness. The purpose of this study is to quantify the benefits of travel time savings that would be achieved as a result of truck platooning. A nice feature of the proposed methodology is the integration of microscopic and macroscopic phenomena in its evaluation framework. First, micro-level analysis was conducted to identify the change in highway capacity in a mixed traffic stream consisting of truck platoons and general vehicles. A widely used microscopic traffic simulator, VISSIM, was adopted to quantify the rate of change of the capacity. For the macro-level analysis, the transportation planning software TransCAD was used to estimate the extent of the reduction in travel times based on the increase in the capacity obtained from the micro-level analysis. Simulations based on the proposed methodology were performed on Korean freeways of 3 or more lanes. It was observed that truck platooning would result in annual benefits of travel time savings corresponding to approximately 187.6 billion Korean won (167.7 million US $) in 2020. The results are expected to support various policy-making activities to facilitate the implementation of truck platooning on freeways.