Evaluating the Potential and Bottleneck of Automated Truck Platooning with Dedicated Lanes on a Seaport-Connected Freeway

Truck platooning (TP) has attracted wide attention as a specific application of autonomous driving technology. A seaport-connected freeway is a typical scenario for TP implementation. Existing TP experiments, while demonstrating potential for efficiency improvement and emissions reduction, remain insufficient explorations of bottleneck conditions. This study adopts simulation to reveal the extreme conditions of TP with dedicated lanes (DL) regarding the TP pilot project on the Donghai Bridge connecting the Yangshan Port with the land of Shanghai. Driving models for human-driven vehicles (HDVs), platoon control models, and DL settings were integrated with a multienergy emissions estimation model and realized using the simulation of urban mobility (SUMO) framework. The results show that TP with a DL is not always beneficial: under high traffic volume conditions (QTP=450 vehicles/h and QHDV=900 vehicles/h), delays and emissions of TP with outermost DL increased by 47% and 15.4% compared with no DL owing to fewer traversable clearances between platoons that cause stops and queuing at both merging and diverging areas. If the number of vehicles exceeds five in a platoon, there would be fewer clearances for HDVs to traverse. These findings imply that TP adoption for port-connected freeways should carefully consider traffic conditions and DL settings.