What is ITS?
Intelligent Transportation Systems represent the next step in the evolution of the nation's entire transportation system. As information technologies and advances in electronics continue to revolutionize all aspects of our modern-day world, from our homes and offices to our schools and even our recreation, they are also being applied to our transportation network. These technologies include the latest in computers, electronics, communications and safety systems.

Where can they be applied?

ITS can be applied to our vast transportation infrastructure of highways, streets, and bridges, as well as to a growing number of vehicles, including cars, buses, trucks, and trains. These information and communications technologies can also be used to better manage and improve how transportation providers such as governments, transit agencies and truckers offer services to the public.

How did ITS get started on the Federal level?

ITS became official when, in 1991, recognizing the critical need to address our aging transportation network and its pressing challenges, Congress legislated the ITS program.

What four key principles guide the program?

Those principles are as follows:
(1) To promote the implementation of a technically integrated and jurisdictionally coordinated transportation system across the country;
(2) To support ongoing applied research and technology transfer;
(3) To ensure that newly developed ITS technologies and services are safe and cost-effective; and
(4) To create a new industry by involving and emphasizing the private sector in all aspects of the program.

Is there active participation, if so by whom?

People from dozens of disciplines are actively working to bring about intelligent transportation systems and to foster this industry. Engineers, planners, transit experts, scientists, scholars, doctors, lawyers, elected and other public officials, and average citizens all over the country are getting involved.

Because of this active participation, the ITS program has been able to mature and center its sights on distinct program areas that have a dual focus: intelligent infrastructure and intelligent vehicles. Intelligent infrastructure is geared to satisfying the transportation needs of metropolitan areas, rural areas and the trucking industry. Intelligent vehicles, on the other hand, complement the ITS infrastructure by focusing on safety and information systems for cars, trucks, buses, and trains.

What are the key elements of the ITS metropolitan approach?

• Traffic signal control
• Freeway management
• Transit management
• Incident management
• Electronic toll collection
• Electronic fare payment
• Railroad crossings
• Emergency response
• Regional multi-modal traveler information
  

What are the benefits of the ITS metropolitan approach?

• Advanced traffic surveillance and signal control systems have resulted in travel time improvements ranging from 8 to 25%
• Freeway management systems, primarily through ramp metering, have reduced crashes by 24 to 50% while handling 8 to 22% more traffic at speeds 13 to 48% faster than pre-existing congested conditions.
• Electronic fare payment technologies for transit systems have resulted in increased revenues of 3 to 30% due to fewer evasions.
• Incident management programs can reduce delay associated with congestion caused by incidents by 10 to 45%.
• Electronic toll collection increases capacity by 200 to 300% compared to attended lanes.

Can you describe ITS for Commercial Vehicles?

ITS applications for commercial vehicles aim to streamline the commercial vehicle safety regulatory system and enhance its effectiveness in the trucking industry. They apply both to truck fleet operators and state regulators. These systems are meant to support a safe and seamless intrastate and interstate transportation system.

Of what is the program for commercial vehicles comprised?

• Electronic clearance
• Automated roadside
• Onboard safety monitoring systems
• Automated administrative processes
• Freight mobility systems
• Hazardous materials incident response

What are some of the benefits of ITS CVO?

• Onboard safety systems, along with electronic clearance and automated roadside safety inspections, are estimated to reduce fatalities by 14 to 32%.
• Cost savings associated with hazardous materials incident response programs are estimated to be $1.7 million annually per state, or $85 million nationwide.
• Automated administrative processes yield benefit/cost ratios of 4:1 for medium-sized carriers and 20:1 for large-sized carriers; and electronic clearance systems have been shown to reduce motor carrier labor costs resulting in a benefit/cost ration of 7:1.
• Freight mobility systems have shown productivity gains for private carriers of sometimes more than 25% per truck per day.

What about ITS in rural areas?

Many of the solutions offered by ITS in rural areas involve similar approaches to those for urban and commercial vehicle applications. Yet, as applied, they are still distinctly rural in nature.

With what is the rural ITS program concerned?

• Traveler safety and security technologies
• Emergency services
• Fleet operations and maintenance systems
• Public traveler and mobility services
• Roadway operations and maintenance technologies
• Tourism and travel information
• Commercial vehicle systems

What are some of the ITS benefits in the rural area?

• Widespread use of Mayday emergency notification devices could reduce the time its takes to discover a rural crash from an average of 9.6 minutes to one minute.
• Advanced lane-keeping and collision-avoidance technologies could prevent 19,000 crashes in rural areas every year due to vehicles running off the road.

What is the Intelligent Vehicle Initiative?

Where the metropolitan, the commercial vehicle and the rural programs are focused primarily on the ITS infrastructure, the Intelligent Vehicle Initiative aims to accelerate the development and availability of advanced safety and information systems applied to all types of vehicles. The goal is to integrate driver assistance and motorist information functions so that vehicles operate more safely and effectively.

What applications does the IVI cover?

It covers applications for passenger vehicles, commercial trucks, buses, and specialized vehicles, such as snowplows. Other special applications to emergency response, law enforcement, and highway maintenance vehicles are also included. Many of these applications are based on ongoing and recently completed research on crash avoidance, in-vehicle safety and automated highway systems. Continuing research on human factors, and advanced driver warning and vehicle control systems are a major thrust of the IVI.

What is the IVI trying to achieve?

This initiative seeks to bring together public and private stakeholders to ensure that in-vehicle systems are technologically, socially, institutionally and economically viable. Partnerships with the motor vehicle industry and its suppliers, states, government organizations, academic institutions and other interested parties are being aggressively pursued.

What are the benefits of the IVI?

• In-vehicle devices addressing lane-change, rear-end and roadway-departure crashes are estimated to offset 1.1 million crashes per year.
• In urban areas, 52,000 crashes could be prevented annually by advanced lane-keeping and collision-avoidance technologies.
• Enhancements in nighttime and bad weather vision applications may significantly improve drivers' abilities to stay in lanes and distinguish hazards in the road.

What is the Federal role in the ITS program?

The ITS infrastructure is ready now. In fact, ITS products, services and technologies are already being implemented in states and localities around the country. However, only pieces of the ITS infrastructure are being put in at any given time, and in a narrowly focused, piecemeal fashion. These individual applications of ITS technologies are actually fragmenting our transportation networks instead of serving as a bridge to a new era. This pattern brings great long-term risk of electronic "hardening" of these systems. This fragmentation would take decades and billions of dollars to overcome.

To close the gap between the great potential that ITS solutions have to offer and the current state of fragmentation, the United States Department of Transportation is following a five-pronged strategy for encouraging the development of technically integrated and institutionally coordinated intelligent transportation systems.