Priority of Commercial Trucks Through Dedicated Lane Assignment

The PRINT project seeks in simple terms to permit a more green traffic flow in urban areas through reducing pollution from commercial trucks by giving priority and thereby decrease the numbers of stop and starts. The green Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) solution is based upon existing technology like detection, tracking and priority hierarchy within traffic light signaling. The adaptation and utilization to aid commercial trucks is however a new concept, that shows substantial potential with regards to reducing emissions and fuel consumptions. The next step in a proposed Norwegian development is to allow commercial trucks in priority lanes in urban areas instead of lining them up in queues. Signal priority and priority lanes combined are investigated in the PRINT project. An extension with a total concept embracing both priority as well as management may be the supreme solution to utilize green ITS and reducing emissions and fuel consumption. This paper describes a proposed lane setup dedicated for heavy vehicles only. The reserved lane gives commercial trucks and buses the wanted progress given a situation with heavy traffic flows and traffic jam. High occupancy for both goods and persons should be in focus for the transport function of the arterial roads. The paper also describes a possible ITS based solution allowing the commercial truck to use onboard units to dynamically get permits from a lane management system based upon available capacity.