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. The research team will begin by exploring flow-smoothing algorithms to control level-2 CAV vehicles. Next, the project will investigate different policies that could be used to support flow smoothing. Furthermore, this work will provide a roadmap towards legislative policies to support deployment strategies in California. In parallel, the researchers 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. The research team will submit three policy briefs summarizing the findings, along with a map of target locations for deployments in California.
