A negotiation protocol to improve long distance truck parking.

Freight transport has a high relevance in the transportation domain. Regulations regarding driving times and rest periods are very restrictive to ensure road safety. Truck drivers need to know the parking availability in road rest areas in order to achieve their destination respecting laws and contributing to road safety, and at the same time, to a sustainable trip. This paper proposes a novel protocol based on cascade negotiations among trucks and rest areas to help drivers in the selection of areas to park for these long journeys. The cascade negotiations are driven according to the parking preferences for each truck involved and the features of the road network. The goal pursued in these negotiations is to minimize the number of trucks that have to park illegally and maximize the satisfaction of drivers with respect to their individual parking preferences. The novel protocol is a combination of a reservation system with a voting-based negotiation. This proposal has been implemented in a Multi-Agent based simulation model. A real road section, the European E-15 road, has been modeled in the MAS using real traffic data. Results show that illegal parking is reduced with respect to a situation without negotiation just following a first-come first-served basis for trucks parking in specific areas. The global satisfaction is enhanced when the protocol results are compared to an approach without negotiation or with a centralized version of the protocol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]