Converting existing general-purpose highway lanes to more restrictive access for use only by certain vehicles or travelers has been politically unacceptable ever since the disastrous initial attempt to convert a lane of the Santa Monica Freeway to HOV-only use 40 years ago. Because CV and AV systems can work much more effectively and provide much higher lane capacity when the equipped vehicles are clustered in close proximity to each other in the same lane, these technologies provide new motivations to convert lanes from general use to more specialized uses. The issue of dedicated lanes needs to be restudied now in light of these developments, to develop more authoritative estimates of the benefits that could be gained and of the disadvantages to the general purpose road users who would be excluded from those lanes.

The objective of this research was to develop guidance on the conditions that appear to be amenable to dedicating lanes for CV/AV users and what policy actions are needed to make this feasible. The research describes benefits to CV/AV users in the dedicated lanes and possible dis-benefits to non-users as a function of market penetration .