WASHINGTON — The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has launched a series of meetings designed to gather information about integrating automated vehicles into the nation’s road network.
The National Dialogue on Highway Automation will focus on the potential of automated vehicles to significantly transform the nation’s roadways and the uncertainty they will cause for the agencies responsible for the planning, design, construction, operation and maintenance of the roadway infrastructure.
A series of meetings beginning in June and running through the end of 2018 will be held across the country to facilitate information sharing, identify key issues and prepare the infrastructure and the broader transportation community to safely and efficiently integrate automated vehicles into the road network.
Input received during the National Dialogue will help inform national research, policy and programs and will aid in the development of a national transportation community for automation.
The program will engage an expanded set of stakeholders, beyond FHWA’s typical stakeholders, in order to ensure that this issue has broad input. These stakeholders will include original equipment manufacturers, technology suppliers, transportation network companies, associations and public-sector partners.
The meetings will last one to one and a half days and generally include 100 to 150 participants. These meetings are meant to gather input and information from stakeholders and will include significant interactive components, such as breakout discussions and listening sessions.
The objectives for the National Dialogue include gathering input from a broad group of stakeholders on key issues, challenges and concerns in highway automation, such as infrastructure readiness, traffic operations, transportation planning and other topics impacted by automation.
The meetings also will facilitate information sharing between industry, public agencies and others to understand the current state of automated driving systems and roadway capabilities and inform FHWA actions.
Another goal is to update institutional structures for working with existing and new stakeholders and to aid in developing new partnerships and strengthening coordination channels between industry, associations, public agencies and other key groups.
FHWA also hopes to raise awareness of agency and U.S. Department of Transportation activities in automation and emerging technologies and to identify opportunities for strategic partnerships between federal activity and state, local, and industry activity.
Focus areas for the meetings include:
- Planning and Policy:This focus area will explore relevant issues for the planning and policy community, such as travel demand changes from automation, land-use implications, infrastructure funding, right-of-way use, transportation systems management and operations, automation legislation/policy and other topics.
- Digital Infrastructure and Data:This focus area will center on the data requirements and needs of automated vehicles (e.g., digital work zone maps, road closures). It will explore the possibility of developing new partnerships and collaboration between public agencies and industry for data sharing and safety.
- Freight:This focus area will deal with truck platooning applications and automated truck freight delivery issues. It will cover possible implications on traffic patterns and operations, as well as potential infrastructure considerations.
- Operations:This focus area will survey the range of operations challenges from highway automation and initiate a discussion on what further research is necessary to address them. These challenges may include incident management and system inefficiency, which may have implications on traffic patterns and roadway capacity.
- Multimodal Safety and Infrastructure Design:This focus area will cover infrastructure requirements, standardization and consistency for automation. It will highlight topics where automation technology developers and public agencies need collaboration to plan for locations where existing roadway infrastructure, road conditions, design features and environments could lead to potential safety hazards.
Information about upcoming meetings can be found at https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/automationdialogue/index.htm
