WisDOT Ponders Using I-94 Shoulders for Autonomous Trucks
By Tom Berg
I-94 near Racine, Wisconsin, might accommodate autonomous trucks on strengthened shoulders, state highway officials say. This is a heavily traveled route for tractor-trailers. Image: Wisconsin DOT
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Should freeway shoulders be set aside to run autonomous trucks? Wisconsin’s Department of Transportation is considering doing that along a portion of Interstate 94 to support the carrying of machinery to a new factory south of Milwaukee.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported last week that state highway officials have suggested that I-94 shoulders between Milwaukee’s Mitchell International Airport and an industrial site near Racine could be strengthened to support the trucks. This would convert the shoulders into haul roads, separate from normal traffic on the busy highway.
It would be part of the state’s desire to set up a test route for self-driving trucks, and to widen I-94 from three to four lanes, for which it is seeking $246 million in federal grants, the newspaper reported. The plan is in its “really, really early” stages, according to highway officials, but even a portion of that dough would buy a lot of grading, paving, and striping needed to guide autonomous trucks.
This section of I-94 is targeted to handle traffic expected from a huge new factory to be erected by Foxconn Technology Group, of Taiwan, outside of Racine, about 35 miles south of the airport. The plant will make digital flat screens for televisions, computers and other electronic equipment.
Production equipment will be flown into Mitchell Field (the airport’s old name and one still used by locals) every day for two-thirds of a year, Wisconsin’s transportation secretary, Dave Ross, said in a speech to a business group and an interview with the newspaper.
“It’s going to take seven plane loads a day, seven days a week for nine months coming into Mitchell, taking about seven or eight truckloads of freight off one …Read the rest of this story
