Texas Tests Connected Freight Trucks Along I-35

Driverless Transportation

The Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) is conducting a connected vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) project designed to improve the movement of freight by heavy-duty trucks along busy I-35 in Texas.

The Transportation Institute is conducting the I-35 Connected Work Zone project for the Texas Department of Transportation under a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT). The interstate is a major north-south route that runs for more than 400 miles from Laredo at the border of Mexico, north to Denton and on to Oklahoma.

The long-haul commercial trucks in the project have information equipment that provides lane-closure locations, traffic delays and other travel information. The equipment gathers the information from highway sensors.

The project is covered in the article ‘TTI, TxDOT Team Up to Test Connected Vehicle Technology’ in the new Texas Transportation Researcher, Volume 51, No. 1, 2015.

The issue also offers brief bios of three executives involved with the Texas Transportation Institute — Roger Guenther, Port of Houston Authority, Drayton McLane, Jr., McLane Group, and Lt. Gen. Joe Weber, Texas Department of Transportation.

The I-35 project is being conducted under U.S. DOT’s Freight Advance Traveler Information System (FRATIS), and is part of another FRATIS test being done with smaller trucks in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. That project uses highway sensors to ensure more efficient use of the trucks, leading to fewer empty runs and reduced traffic congestion.

I-35 map courtesy of Texas Comptroller.