A Greedy Techno-Economic Approach for Selection of C-ITS Roadside Unit Locations along Highways

Abstract

As Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) hold many promises in reducing societal costs of traffic, the European Commission aspires to move to more C-ITS deployments in the coming years. Despite the promise of socioeconomic benefits, C-ITS deployments require substantial investments from European Member States in roadside infrastructure and in central traffic management systems. These investment costs currently outweigh the expected benefits, due to limited expected uptake of C-ITS in European passenger cars. However, since traffic volumes and the associated societal costs are not uniformly distributed along highways, investments in specific Road-Side Units (RSUs) locations might be viable, despite an overall RSU investment appraisal seeming unfeasible. Therefore, in this work, a greedy techno-economic selection algorithm for RSU deployment locations is presented. It was found that, for Flanders, a subset of potential RSU locations resulted in a positive business case from societal point of view, whereas the initial overall investment case resulted in a negative assessment conclusion.