Project Summary
This project will investigate the impact of flow smoothing on generic California freeways and the cumulative impact this could have on energy efficiency of traffic. It will then investigate policies to support flow smoothing in California. We will begin by exploring flow-smoothing algorithms to control level-2 CAV vehicles. Next, we will investigate different policies that could be used to support flow smoothing. Furthermore, we will provide a roadmap towards legislative policies to support deployment strategies in California. In parallel, we will also investigate avenues for the private sector and the way policies could be used to incentivize OEMs to accelerate the deployment of smoothing policies in their vehicles. The proposed policies can significantly reduce energy consumption of traffic waves which can help California meet its environmental goals. We will submit three policy briefs summarizing our findings, along with a map of target locations for deployments in California.
