Value of eco-friendly route choice for heavy-duty trucks

Heavy-duty trucks are a critical component of any goods movement system; however, they consume a large amount of fuel and emit significant pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions. An important consideration for reducing fuel consumption and improving trucking operations is efficient vehicle routing. Many existing fleet management and routing systems are based on minimizing distance traveled which does not necessarily minimize fuel consumption or emissions, particularly when under traffic congestion and in areas with hilly terrain. This paper describes the development of an eco-routing and navigation system for heavy-duty trucks, including an underlying truck energy and emission model that accounts for vehicle weight, real-time traffic speed, and road grade. Validation results presented in this paper show that the eco-routing system was able to predict fuel consumption within 7.5% over the test routes. In addition, this paper presents an analysis of the tradeoff between the amount of fuel savings and the added travel time relative to the fastest route. The elasticity of fuel with respect to travel time is calculated and a sensitivity analysis with respect to fuel price and the value of travel time is performed which provides the "break even" conditions between a fuel optimized and a time optimized route. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.