Understanding the Costs Associated with Connected and Automated Vehicles

Significant work is happening across the FHWA program offices and modal administrations to understand the impacts of connected and automated vehicle technologies. Less work has been completed to understand the expected costs of the technology or how to pay for the increased operating costs of a transportation system that leverages emerging technologies within the limitations of the Federal Aid Program.

To understand the potential trajectories of CAV deployment, the FHWA Office of Policy, in partnership with the Office of Planning, supported research (funded by JPO) to develop scenarios that provide a range of possibilities for how CAVs become part of our transportation systems by the year 2035. To this end, six scenarios were developed to understand relative impacts of CAV deployment, one base scenario and five alternate CAV deployment. A follow on project (2018) developed a cost tool that can provide nationwide point cost estimates for the five CAV deployment scenarios. Toward the end of the project, Volpe conducted an independent third-party review of the tool with 10–15 recommendations for making updates to the tool. Unfortunately, none of the suggestions were implemented due to limitations with the existing contract.

This project will update the 2018 cost tool with the Volpe independent review recommendations. Additionally, this project will update the 2018 cost tool to account for new data surrounding the likely cost of CAVs (e.g., the recommendations in the 2021 FHWA Impacts of Automated Vehicles on Highway Infrastructure report; digital infrastructure costs; any cost changes associated with the FCC Safety Band decision; etc.).

This project will also update the tool to be more flexible with scenario definitions (so that State and local agencies can use the tool to explore costs associated with the scenario definitions they’ve developed with their stakeholders). (In the current version of the tool, the scenarios are hard coded, making it not possible to alter the percentage of connected vehicles and automated vehicles to explore other scenarios of interest).

I anticipate that the cost tool and accompanying training resources (to support customization) can be incorporated into the new Smart Communities Resource Center.
 

• TBD