Planners say 'smart roads' will unlock benefits from self-driving cars, curb accidents, but costs are high
States Wire Up Roads as Cars Get Smarter Planners say
'smart roads' will unlock benefits from self-driving cars, curb accidents, but
costs are high
By PAUL PAGE Jan. 2, 2017 3:59 p.m. ET
FAIRFAX, Va.-On a crowded interstate outside Washington,
D.C., large digital signs over four westbound lanes flashed messages lowering
the speed limit by 10, then 20 miles an hour.
Drivers slowed just as a fast-moving thunderstorm
unleashed sheets of rain that drenched the road and reduced visibility to a few
dozen yards. There was no abrupt braking, no swerving and none of the
fender-benders that can tie up traffic for miles.
The signs, installed last year, are a first step toward
what highway planners say is a future in which self-driving cars will travel on
technology-aided roads lined with fiber optics, cameras and connected signaling
devices that will help vehicles move as quickly as possible-and more safely.
Transit planners say these so-called smart roads will
unlock bigger benefits from self-driving cars, including fewer accidents,
faster trips and fuel savings.
So far, the technology is being built into just a few
miles of highway in a handful of states, even as smartcars hit the roads. Uber
Technologies Inc.
is testing a small fleet in Pittsburgh and the company's
Otto business in October delivered a load of Budweiser beer with a self-driving
truck.
Silicon Valley trucking-software maker Peloton Technology
Inc. wants to deploy autonomous truck convoys this year.
"This transition is happening a lot quicker than we
anticipated," says Ronique Day, a government transportation analyst in
Virginia, one of several states studying ways for roads and cars to
communicate.
State transit authorities say they may make up some
ground if the incoming administration of Donald Trump fulfills promises to
increase infrastructure spending. With many states struggling to cover basic
highway maintenance, planners say billions of federal dollars likely will be
needed to wire the nation's more than 4 million miles of paved roads and
250,000 intersections.
"The budgets are not getting bigger and all this new
technology is going to come at a cost," said Myra Blanco, director of the
Virginia Tech Transportation Institute's Center for Policy and Outreach, which
is researching how the next generation of roads and cars interact on a 2.2-mile
test road in the southwestern Virginia town of Blacksburg.
Ohio last month said it would spend $15 million to
install smart-road technology along 35 miles of Route 33, a state road from
outside Columbus to the state's Transportation Research Center in East Liberty.
"The innovators will be the ones that work this
out," says Bryan Thomas, a spokesman for the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration.
Car companies say their self-driving vehicles will be
safer than automobiles driven by people and help reduce the nation's roughly
35,000 annual traffic fatalities.
Planners say smart roads can generate fuel savings by
having cars drive at steady speeds, without stops and starts, and increase road
capacity by enabling vehicles to travel closer together without risking traffic
snarls or accidents.
The first step for the states, which oversee the vast
majority of big roads, will be deciding how to communicate with cars as an
array of auto makers and tech companies independently develop
autonomous-driving technology. No common standard has been established for how
a new generation of smartcars will receive information from smart roads-or how
they will handle alerts once they get them.
"What we have is a chicken-and-egg problem,"
says Utah transportation systems program director Blaine Leonard, who is
chairman of a national committee on connected cars and roads run under the
American Association of State Highway and Transportation. "Cars right now
don't have anything on them to talk to. Most of the installations [on roads]
are for research purposes."
Utah is undertaking a test of the technology on a stretch
of Salt Lake City's Redwood Road, a major north-south commuter route. Sensors
on traffic lights connect to public buses and can adjust red and green signals
to help buses stay on schedule.
Highway researchers say their biggest hurdle is ensuring
they have technology that can work.
Road connections to cars have mostly used dedicated
short-range communications, or DSRC, a wireless link commonly used in transportation
systems to manage stoplights and tolling. But researchers say the industry may
settle on cellular-data systems used for smartphones or Wi-Fi if the technology
can handle information reliably and rapidly.
"Today's biggest expense is not hardware but
software," says Mr. Leonard.
"There's no Apple Store for this technology."
Virginia has strapped one-foot-square DSRC devices on
light poles and bridges on various roads, including Interstate 66 outside
Washington, D.C.
The gadgets watch the highway and allow workers at a
central-control site to change recommended speeds lane-by-lane depending on
traffic and communicate that to drivers with the signs mounted over the
highway. They also send messages to state government road-maintenance vehicles
about traffic flows and road conditions.
Those so-called pings, and emergency messages that may be
communicated on electronic boards on many highways, would arrive through a
smartphone-like app that displays alerts on drivers' dashboards, says Dean
Gustafson, operations division administrator at the Virginia Department of
Transportation.
In a connected future, says Mr. Gustafson, the sensors
along I-66 that now monitor traffic flows may get data signals from each car
and see that wheels are losing touch with the road as a rainstorm builds.
Instead of changing speed limits, the road devices could alert cars miles away
to slow down and even give them new routes to their destinations.
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