Federal corridors of the future - I-70 KS-WV toll truckway and others ahead of PA/I-80

The US department of transport is supporting a bunch of new toll projects under the rubric of Corridors of the Future (CoF), part of their larger anti-congestion initiative. The CoF grant money is relatively small but more important may be US priority in permitting. Pennsylvania which chose not to participate in CoF was reminded last week in an FHWA response to the application to toll I-80 that CoFs get priority for limited slots or authorities to toll in federal law - virtually dooming the state legislature's scheme to fund other roads and bridges in Pennsylvania out of interstate toll profits.

CoF proposals were solicited in Sept 2006. Out of 38 received six interstate projects have recently been selected for US Government support after a two-phase selection process. USDOT gave preference to toll financed projects in line with the wish to move road financing away from dependence on grant handouts toward direct use charges - tolls or road pricing. Also there was preference in the CoF selection for projects using advanced technology, those involving more than one state, and those catering heavily to freight.

(Pennsylvania should have teamed with Ohio and New Jersey to do LCV truck tolls including new lanes in congested portions from the Ohio Turnpike in Youngstown OH to the port of Newark.)

Six chosen CoF projects are:

1. I-95 Florida, Georgia, Carolinas, Virginia with toll financing
2. Toll truckway added to I-70 Kansas to West Virginia borders
3. Truck toll upgrades of I-15 California to I-70 in Utah
4. I-5 new Columbia River toll bridge WA-OR and other studies the length of the major Pacific coast highway
5. I-10 freight improvements from Los Angeles to Jacksonville FL 3860km (2400 miles)
6. I-69 the 4315km (2680 mile) NAFTA Highway Mexican to Canadian borders - study of toll financing

We only have the details of one of these six - the I-70 truckway proposal which is the focus of this article.

I-70 toll truckway

Truck-only roadways on I-70 from Kansas City in western Missouri through Illinois, Indiana and Ohio to the West Virginia line would extend the Kansas Turnpike and Rocky Mountains operation of efficient longer combination vehicles (triples and long doubles) nearly 1270km (789 miles) from the great plains to the Appalachians.

Says the FHWA:"This project proposes dedicated and segregated truck lanes along I-70 from the Interstate 435 beltway on the eastern part of Kansas City, Missouri to the Ohio/West Virginia border near Bridgeport, Ohio/Wheeling, West Virginia. The concept proposes adding four dedicated truck lanes to the existing infrastructure, two in each direction, with at least one interchange per county providing access to the truck lanes and includes, conceptually, truck staging areas. These lanes present the opportunity to pilot size and weight increases on a facility dedicated to trucks. The dedicated truck lanes are seen as a way to reduce congestion, improve safety, and offset the maintenance costs of general purpose lanes."

Total traffic varies between 45k and 240k average daily and truck traffic ranges between 11k and 26k.

Larger longer combinations a key

The feds say that operations of larger more efficient vehicles would offer the opportunity to attract some truck traffic away from other parallel routes such as I-80 and I-40. I-70 avoids the I-80/90 lake-effect snows in the winter.

They state: "These options make I-70 a reasonable candidate for a tolled facility."

Our thought: If West Virginia and Maryland at the eastern end, and Colorado in the middle could be added to the I-70 coalition then along with the I-15 project from Utah to Los Angeles (#3 in the list above) there would be an intercontinental toll truckway from the country's leading import port on the west coast all the way to Baltimore.

LCV thaw for dedicated truckways?

The federal grants for I-70 support $5m of feasibility studies and environmental permitting work for an LCV truckway the 1,300km from Kansas City to Wheeling WV. The project would probably need the US Congress to modify the "LCV freeze" provisions of ISTEA in 1991 for segregated truckway.

The LCV freeze was intended to apply to mixed traffic lanes having been enacted before the idea of dedicated truck-only lanes segregated from the rest of the traffic was proposed by Reason. For large loads operating truck costs per ton can be cut by 30 to 40% with double long trailers as opposed to a normal tractor-semitrailer. Fuel use and emissions are also reduced substantially, and toll operators can get a share of the higher productivity in higher toll rates.

Platooning

The proposal also suggests that truck platooning could be used to improve productivity on the I-70 truckway. In platooning control technologies have the front truck combination lead several other combinations. The following trucks' acceleration, braking and steering are coordinated electronically with the driven lead truck. The equipment and systems have been developed since the mid-1990s by a team of engineers at University of California Berkeley led by Stephen Shladover.

With the lead combination doing the driving the drivers in the following vehicles become attendants or monitors - at least on the mainline. With electronic coordination it is possible to run the combinations close enough together to greatly reduce air resistance. The following vehicles slip in the wake of those ahead. This improves fuel economy and reduces tailpipe emissions.

Fuel savings and emission reductions are in the range of 10 to 20% with platooning.

And with following drivers relaxing in 'non-duty status' hours of service restrictions become less onerous, and labor costs per ton-km are less.

The proposal is that the I-70 truckway be self-contained in that it will contain its own ramps and interchanges linked to staging areas for making-up and breaking down the long combinations without them having to ever mix with cars.

Clean slate for testing

The I-70 project is described as providing a "clean slate" on which trucks, their roadway, and supporting information and controlling technologies can be designed anew. Whether trucks should be wider or higher can be considered, as well as longer and heavier in the closed roadway system proposed. A consultative process with stakeholders would develop standards and specify technologies.

The ability to serve new more productive truck combinations is called the "cornerstone" of the proposed corridor. (One reason I-81 in Virginia flopped as a proposed truckway was that it offered truckers no opportunity to go beyond present truck combinations.)

478km (297mi) or about 38% of I-70 MO-IL-IN-OH is in urban areas, so a dedicated truckway can offer time savings through being managed for free flow as compared to trucks using mixed traffic lanes.

Traffic heading for 25k trucks/day

11m people live within 40km (25 miles) of the 4 state stretch of I-70. The area is unusually heavily dependent on truck-oriented employment such as manufacturing and warehousing. Its centrality means it is at many crossroads of other highways and of railways.

FHWA projections are 100k total daily traffic of which trucks will be over 25k on average through the length of the 4-state section by 2035. The 25k trucks will pretty much fill 2+2 truckway lanes to capacity.

Congestion in the ex-urban sections of I-70 currently occurs on 16% of the mileage, but without lane additions this is expected to grow to 87% by 2035. The application says that speeds are already lower on I-70 (only 2+2 lanes basically) compared to I-80 (3+3 lanes in most of Ohio and much of Illinois). In addition Ohio DOT has a truck speed limit of only 55mph (89km/hr) vs the Turnpike's 70mph (113km/hr) on I-80/90. The low truck speed limit is posted because of the mixed car and truck traffic and congested conditions on I-70.

Presumably a dedicated truckway would allow speeds in straight flat country of about 80mph (129km/hr), as proposed for truck-only roadways in Texas.

"Improving mobility on I-70 for trucks in the future requires a strategy which separates trucks from passenger cars and supports higher truck speeds, while improving safety..." says the proposal.

The "need to facilitate higher truck speed" while improving safety by segregation of trucks from cars is described as a focal point for improving the performance of the road as a truck route and as part of the interstate system.

Improved safety from segregation will in turn reduce incident caused delays which are a significant source of congestion and slower speed.

The application suggests the private concession longterm lease model could be used for financing the truckway - "unique financing operations" and "private sector investment incentives."

The states say they will work with "partners" at the American Trucking Associations and its research arm, among others. They propose a "longdistance truck-focussed model that can set the standard for other (interstates)."

Safety a big attraction

The prospect of improved safety is seen a major attraction of the truckway. 12% of car fatalities are due to collisions with large trucks, so the more trucks can operate in segregated facilities the less exposure car occupants will have to the dangerous imbalance between the typical truck mass and the typical car mass. (35t+ vs 2t-)

Configuration

The I-70 proposal shows urban and rural sections with different kinds of separation (spelt 'seperation' redneck style in the Wilbur Smith diagrams).

The 2/2T/2T/2 configuration for a truckway inside 2+2 mixed traffic lanes requires 25m (82ft) each direction compared to 15.8m (52ft) per direction for a typical 3+3 lane expressway or a total width of 50m (164ft) vs 31.7m (104ft) in an urban setting.

This provides for:
- breakdown shoulder of 3m (10ft)
- travel lanes of 3.66m (12ft)
- leftside offsets of 1.83m (6ft) from barrier

(There's an argument for truck lanes a minimum or 4m (13.1ft) to allow slightly wider trucks, the mixed traffic lanes a tad slimmer at 3.3m (11ft) and breakdown shoulders full width (4m) so they can double as travel lanes in case of roadwork or incidents.)

In the rural setting the Wilbur Smith concepts provide for grassed areas separating the four roadways rather than barriers. They show 9.15m (30ft) between the edge markings of the mixed traffic and the truck lanes about half of which is grass, the rest being paved offset or shoulder. And it shows somewhat more between the two directions of trucks in the center. This produces a roadway width each direction of 32.9m (108ft) not counting clearzone on the side. With clearzones of 9.8m (32ft) the total right of way required is 85.3m (280ft) [13/14ths ff].

[Modern American journalism seems to be abandoning olde englishe foot/pd not for international metric but for sportsy measures like American football fields (ff) and fractions thereoff, no decimals.]

INNOVATION: Most truck innovations historically have originated in the US. The first tractor-trailers or semi-trailers are attributed to Charles Martin of Springfield MA in 1911 who developed the characteristic hitch of "fifth wheel" coupling, also called a B-train to distinguish it from the A-train of a self-contained or full trailer.

B-doubles and B-triples using the principle of the semitrailer to reduce 'off-tracking' and wander for second and third trailers are attributed to University of Michigan Transport Research Center back in the early 1960s when they were interested in trucking efficiency and economic reform. But they have been exploited almost entirely outside the US, notably in Canada and Australia. In the US a political impasse in federal law (the LCV Freeze) has frozen an archaic mishmash of different regulations and barred improvements.

In the past several decades Australia has become the world center of trucking improvements - with experience in complicated heavy combinations, new suspensions, new axle groupings, and a rigorous process for setting and maintaining standards.

The US however is going to be where the first dedicated truckways are built because we have the largest densities of truck traffic and the greatest need. They will offer an unparalleled opportunity for improvements - if politics allow.

A paper produced at Reason called "Toll Truckways: a new path toward safer and more efficient freight transportation" (Policy Study 294) in June 2002 was the beginning point for much of the current discussion of truckways. Download it here. 

TERMINOLOGY: The I-70 proposal uses the term truck only lanes (TOLs) for what we call truckways. We prefer the term truckway since the composite of truck and -way conveys better the sense of the facility being selfcontained and segregated.

It is possible to think of TOLs as being on the same stretch of roadway pavement as mixed traffic lanes and only separated by stripes, and for truck only lanes to share ramps with mixed traffic. Indeed the failed VA/I-81 proposal incorporated exactly those kind of TOLs with only stripe separation and mixing of vehicles through joint use of ramps. That may be the only financially viable configuration in some situations, but such compromise-TOLs will have significantly smaller safety benefits than truckways which we envisage as being barrier separated or at least widely spaced from mixed traffic lanes and having their own dedicated ramps and staging areas - and zero mixing of traffic.

TOLs in which there is any mixing of traffic won't be able (rightly) to obtain exemption from the LCV freeze. Platoons of heavy trucks won't be able to safely share ramps with mixed traffic. Cars won't want six or eight closely coupled combinations running alongside them with only stripe separation.

Without the ability to accommodate longer and heavier combinations and to platoon between staging areas vehicles much of the potential gain from truck segregation will be forgone.

So the distinction can be made between compromise-TOLs and completely segregated truck-only roadways we'll call the latter truckways.

Download Part 3, the most important part of the I-70 truckway proposal here.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-10-21 ADDITIONS 2007-10-22