AUTOMATED HWY TRB applauds kill, scarifies mismanagement

AHS

TRB applauds kill, scarifies mismanagement

A Transp Research Board (TRB) committee to review the automated highway research program has supported the USDOT decision to kill the program which, it said, was fatally flawed from the outset and seriously mismanaged. It ended up as dishonest hucksterism, the report suggests.

The TRB panel report says the National Automated Highway System Consortium (NAHSC) which ran the program lacked objectivity and devoted quite disproportionate resources to the San Diego PR demonstration of August last. Fundamental questions were glossed over by the consortium for the length of the program, especially the central issue of whether automated vehicles could share lanes with manually driven ones. If they did share lanes then there would be few if any gains in either safety or capacity. If on the other hand automated vehicles required separate lanes, then highway administrators were not interested in AHS since it was financially and politically impractical.

The consortium’s technical studies concluded early on that mixed traffic would not produce safety or capacity gains, yet apparently in order to sustain support, the consortium refused to accept those findings, the report says. It became a booster of the program, unable or unwilling to report objectively.

“Throughout, the consortium’s work tend(ed) to selectively emphasize findings that are favorable to early development and deployment of automated highway systems and minimize those that are not.”

The report says that the Consortium was mistakenly given a role to both assess and to promote AHS, and that its promotion got in the way of its ability to objectively assess.

The TRB panel criticizes the consortium for “uneven attention to issues” by an exaggerated focus on engineering technicalia and neglect of the non-technical issues which most worried transport agencies and other stakeholders. Promises to address these human factors, planning, economic, legal and environmental issues were followed by “cursory” coverage. The Consortium reached conclusions which were “especially optimistic” and “highly conjectural.” It misrepresented the findings of workshops — “Close examination of the workshops sponsored by the consortium fails to uncover how such conclusions were reached.”

The report says that a central issue for the application of automation, the human-machine relationship, received “limited attention” under the NAHSC program. Indeed it was belated discussion within USDOT of whether it is even desirable to have fully automated (“hands-off/feet-off”) driving that led to the decision to withdraw support US funding from the NAHSC.

In the spring of 1997, the panel reports, USDOT decided it needed to refocus on practical nearer term applications of ITS, especially safety related projects. The NAHSC made some attempts to adapt its program but was hampered by its cumbersome consensus seeking style of management and distracted by the San Diego PR effort. It responded “slowly and with some reluctance” to its principal funder’s wishes and so lost its support.

The panel do say that the Consortium “diligently pursued its charge” from the Congress and the USDOT, but that its efforts “raised many more issues than they resolved.” It became unable to build support for specifying an automated highway system, as the initial objective had been defined.

The panel concluded that the mission of the AHS program “proved unachievable, not only because of the daunting technical, institutional and societal issues that would need to be adresssed but because the needs justifying (an) accelerated approach were not made evident.”

The program’s goals and processes should have been questioned more at its inception.

USDOT does not escape criticism. It went beyond the congressional mandate in ordering the demonstration project and in emphasizing the advocacy role for the NAHSC. It supported an unwarranted fast-track to specify an automated system. USDOT did not organize any third party review of the program, until the end.

“Can a federal agency serve effectively as a program’s sponsor, active participant, and overseer?” the report asks, clearly implying an emphatic negative. The report says that: “Early specification of a fully automated highway system is an inappropriate goal.” However exploration of advanced technologies to meet safety and capacity needs is necessary, and automation may develop as an evolution of the application of various ITS technologies. The NAHSC style merging of public and private sectors needs to re-evaluated, it suggests.

The panel was chaired by Arden Bement, a former TRW engineer, program administrator at the Pentagon, now an engineering professor at Purdue University and its vice-chairman was Herbert H Richardson, director of the Texas Transp Institute and former chief scientist at USDOT. It included other transp policy veterans and major agency heads such as Lawrence Dahms, Thomas Deen, Thomas Larson and Wayne Shackleford, and some top academics and consulting firm people.

A TRB staffer involved in the review says he was struck by the speed with which the review panel became skeptical about the AHS program and the unanimity and strength of its views.

That unanimity is probably reflected in the clarity and forcefulness of the report’s expression. (“Review of the National Automated Highway System Research Program” Special Report 253, Transportation Research Board, National Academy Press: contact Thomas R Menzies study director; publications dept 202 334 3213 fax 202 334 2519 mramage@nas.edu)