ABSTRACT
This paper assesses the impacts on travel time and travel time reliability associated with the operation of Autonomous Truck Platoons (ATPs) at freeway diverge areas. ATP technologies are mature, and commercial deployments are expected in the next few years (earlier than autonomous passenger cars). However, there is insufficient information about the impacts that ATPs will generate on the traffic stream, especially around exit lanes. This paper proposes an interdisciplinary framework to integrate ATPs into a microscopic traffic simulator. A combinatorial experiment is performed to test the impact of four experimental variables on travel time and reliability, i.e., (i) traffic volume projections, (ii) ATP penetration rates, (iii) ATP sizes, and (iv) ATP gaps. Two performance metrics are employed and statistically tested to quantify the impact of these variables on (a) though- and (b) divergent-traffic. Numerical results demonstrate the significance and impact of experimental variables on travel time and reliability.
