Modeling impacts of freight automated vehicles in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area

Automated vehicle (AV) technology will bring about disruptive changes to transportation of people and goods. To better understand such changes through macroscopic modeling, studies so far predominantly focused on passenger AVs. This paper examines the impacts of freight AVs at the network level in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), Canada. This is achieved by implementing several automation scenarios in a recently developed commercial vehicle model for the GTHA. The scenarios are designed based on some of the anticipated changes in vehicle technology and the freight logistics market. They represent a range of possibilities that may occur at partial and full market adoption of freight AVs. Model results suggest that network-level congestion will increase in the near term when automated trucks operate alongside human-driven trucks and are allowed on the freeways only. However, with full market adoption, the network will be less congested compared to no automation, even if "induced" truck demand is accounted for. The overall truck vehicle kilometers travelled (VKT) will increase during partial and full truck automation.