United States Department of Transportation
i
Quantifying Benefits of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control Towards Sustainable Transportation System
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2011-05-01
[PDF-768.81 KB]
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Edition:Final Report
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Abstract:Transportation is a rapidly changing field that impacts all members of society in this country. One of the controversial and more dangerous ways in which transportation impacts society is through high carbon dioxide emissions and fuel consumption which are believed to cause global warming and climate change. IntelliDrive is a U.S. Department of Transportation funded program that aims to use wireless communication between vehicles and infrastructure to make the transportation system safer, more efficient, and reduce environmental impacts. Studies on IntelliDrive applications have focused primarily on feasibility, implementation, and mobility improvements; few have examined environmental impacts. This study examines a cooperative vehicle-infrastructure system on a corridor of intersections to determine what environmental improvements are possible. Several different volume cases were tested and in all cases the improvements to mobility, environmental and safety impact were clearly significant. The study then broadens the scope of analysis to consider what the environmental impacts of the vehicle and infrastructure both have on society from a life cycle perspective. A cooperative vehicleinfrastructure system is made possible by advanced computing and communications technology and equipment. Such electronics require energy intensive manufacturing and a wide variety of natural resource inputs. In order to evaluate life cycle CO2 emissions and energy use for the vehicle and the intersection infrastructure, a life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted on each the vehicle and the infrastructure equipment. An LCA helps quantify the environmental impacts of a product including the raw materials acquisition, manufacturing, use, and disposal. When the life time energy inputs and CO2 outputs of both the vehicle and the infrastructure are taken into consideration the environmental impacts change somewhat; however, are still ultimately governed by automobile use. This report described a method for using microscopic simulation to evaluate vehicles operating in a cooperative vehicle-infrastructure environment and how both process life cycle assessment and economic input-output life cycle assessment can be used in transportation to help better understand environmental impacts and facilitate decision making.
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