ACC, queue storage, and worrisome news for cities

Abstract

Rush-period traffic conditions in two idealized settings are forecast into the future, when most drivers will presumably rely on adaptive cruise control (ACC) while operating their cars. Field experiments emulating the full range of congested conditions confirm that, for a given traffic speed, the spacings for ACC-vehicles tend to be larger than those in present-day congestion, where vehicles are fully human-controlled. These larger spacings mean smaller densities, which mean, in turn, that queues will be less compacted than at present. The queues will therefore expand over greater distances in the future, as more ACC-controlled vehicles enter the scene. These wider-spread, uncompacted queues spell trouble for cities, where queue storage during a rush is often a problem already.

Simulations calibrated to the field-measured data were used to explore this unintended consequence of ACC for various foreseeable futures. Assumptions favorable to ACC were adopted throughout, to produce what are likely lower-bound estimates of future queue-storage problems. These lower bounds served as simple means to address forecast uncertainties. This is because our best-case outcomes for all futures examined are still far worse than the glowing predictions from elsewhere of how ACC may someday eliminate congestion. The first idealized setting was inspired by Downtown Los Angeles, where moderately high congestion already persists during each rush, but where physically long street links help with queue storage. We predict that, owing to ACC alone, rush-period vehicle hours traveled (VHT) on this first network will grow from present-day levels by as much as 12%. In the second setting, inspired by Midtown Manhattan where congestion is already severe and link lengths are short, VHT is predicted to grow by as much as 87%. Higher bottleneck capacities often promised of ACC are shown to be of little value when spillover queues constrain bottleneck flows from reaching those capacities. Adjusting onboard ACC controllers to produce smaller jam spacings was tested through simulation. The tests show how looming problems might be averted by this intervention, and futures thus improved.