ITS is an industry whose ultimate goal is to no longer be a separate industry—all transportation should be intelligent, and the distinction should go away. The vehicle, traveler and transportation infrastructure all benefit from electronic instrumentation to improve safety, mobility, efficiency and the environment. Based on merit, ITS should be integrated into every vehicle, highway, transit line and parking garage.
With few detractors and virtually no opponents, ITS should be universally deployed across the full spectrum of transportation services. ITS deployment in the U.S. today is anything but universal, and after over 20 years of deployment activity ITS is still a small industry that has yet to find the one big hook that will make it explode. The U.S. consumer market is strong for cars, cell phones and computers as separate items. Supply exceeds demand for systems that connect these separate markets in meaningful ways. The U.S. consumer market for ITS has grown stronger, but at a snail’s pace.
ITS is here to stay, but market forces and societal megatrends are going to change the industry dramatically. There will be an ITS business in the future, but it will not be business as usual.
Ready for a closeup
A snapshot of the ITS industry reveals a widening array of scattered goods and services, none of which is the signature application that will launch ITS into the forefront of our popular culture. There is no ITS equivalent of the iPod. The newest developments are in vehicle-infrastructure integration (VII).
VII is the application intended to integrate the road (infrastructure) with the vehicles on it. VII has entered a research phase in spite of initial skepticism within the industry as to its usefulness and practicality. It is still in a state of infancy, and as a result, the primary interface between vehicles and the road is still rubber tires.
The most mature technical interface between vehicles and infrastructure is the Direct Short Range Communication (DSRC) electronic toll tags and stickers (transponders).
The transponder has emerged as the No. 1 ITS device in terms of worldwide consumer market penetration, easily surpassing dashboard-based vehicle navigation systems, which rarely offer real-time traffic information. The electronic toll market is growing fast, while sales of dashboard systems have been diluted by sales of hand-held navigation systems.
The most mature infrastructure-based ITS applications are freeway management systems and traffic-signal systems, most of which were installed before 2000. These systems have become too mature and basically are falling into a state of obsolescence and disrepair from both an operational and maintenance perspective.
The widespread investment in transportation management centers (TMCs) by state DOTs has created many urban “nerve centers” for traffic control. A few TMCs have impressive arrays of devices at command, while others are a brain without a body. The main problem with TMCs is the inability to fund even the minimum number of human positions with qualified personnel needed to operate the systems to their full potential.
The few agencies that have privatized TMC operations have done better. The private sector has a good track record delivering on contracted missions for the centers. Privatization contracts may be superior in terms of service but are often politically tenuous, because they are easy targets for the myopic, bureaucratic cost cutter whose charge is to “do less with less.”
Advanced traveler information systems, including 5-1-1 traveler information services, have become the flagship of the infrastructure side of ITS, but 5-1-1 deployment from a national perspective is highly disjointed and nonconforming to any true national standard. The 5-1-1 concept has suffered from the decline of freeway management systems, which should be good sources of real-time data on traffic but too often are insufficient to serve a regional 5-1-1.
A 5-1-1 is only as good as the data feeding it. The San Francisco Bay area 5-1-1 has been touted by some as the nation’s best, but unfortunately was developed with an outdated data format called Datex-ASN, which was expensive to implement and essentially obsolete the day the system was commissioned.
In contrast, the newer 5-1-1 applications in Florida are using (or migrating to) a more universal data format called XML. The Florida 5-1-1 is growing stronger as data from the new Sunguide freeway management systems being deployed statewide becomes available. Sunguide-based 5-1-1 will likely surpass the California system in terms of message value, quality and quantity of customer requests.
Equally important to the two successful systems mentioned, the notable absence of 5-1-1 in some major metropolitan areas known for traffic congestion weakens the industry. To some, 5-1-1 is the biggest ITS success story, and to others it is the biggest disappointment. It will be easier to say 5-1-1 has arrived when it is up and running strong in Los Angeles and New York.
On the go
Would Americans rather live without ITS or without a cell phone? ITS is obviously not as important to the American consumer as many other categories of electronics. ITS takes a back seat to cell phones, digital music players, cameras, digital video recorders and computer games. There are simple market forces at play that have constrained ITS deployment, and these same forces will shape the future direction of ITS deployment. Vehicles are changing, roads are changing and people’s attitudes are changing. ITS is simply waiting its turn to become important to consumers. Personal mobility is the market force driving electronics, and when the public at large makes the connection between ITS and mobility, ITS will take off.
There is no greater market force or trend in play today and in the near future than personal mobility. The human being is becoming less wired and more virtual in exponential fashion. The “killer app” that unchained our bodies was the cell phone. As we became free to move while communicating, the car became an extension of home and office. One of the reasons people have not gone ballistic over two-hour commutes is that with your cell phone you are not out of touch for two hours. Adding to the inertia keeping us moving was the advent of e-mail. It extended the workplace forever beyond the cloth walls of the cubicle.
E-mail frees us from being present or establishing the presence of another at the moment we communicate. It works extremely well and sets us free to move and work while moving. Newton’s laws tell us that a body in motion tends to stay in motion. The continual press of the market forces that drive mobility applied to bodies already in motion results in acceleration. Mobility is ever increasing. People are being conditioned to expect and value their personal mobility.
Congestion on our highways is not a result of too many cars. It is the result of an expectation, desire and need for the individual to be mobile. This need for mobility explains why the increase in fuel cost has not slowed traffic growth. It will take more than high gasoline prices to derail personal mobility.
The only things keeping us from going totally mobile for 24 hours a day are the needs to sleep and bathe. The need for shelter, to sleep at a home, is the last great barrier to the perpetual motion of full mobility. In the next 20 years people will continue to spend more time on the highway and less at home. The marketplace will provide them with a more comfortable, productive, entertaining and slower trip.
Car, sweet car
Our cars are second homes. They will become first homes for many of the truly mobile youth of America.
Microsoft’s onboard computer software has matured and is ready for prime time—introduced this year as Sync. This is an important glimpse into the future of the vehicle interior. Just as DSRC revolutionized toll collection, near-field communication will revolutionize vehicle interior interfaces. The most likely configuration to emerge is a near-field-based rearview mirror, which will sync up with your handheld, whatever that may be, and also your electronic wallet from which to pay tolls.
The days of sticking a transponder to the windshield will end. Whether you are in your own, a rental or someone else’s car, your electronic credentials will be read and used by the vehicle. The vehicle will have its own electronic credentials implanted on the assembly line, and these electronic credentials will be communicated to regulatory infrastructure.
At the International Bridge, Tunnel & Turnpike Association’s Fall Technology Workshop in Miami in November 2007, Larry Burns, vice president of research and development and strategic planning for General Motors, provided an audience of toll road operators with a stunning vision of developments that are near market readiness.
GM has developed a vehicle called Volt that is powered by a system called E-Flex. The vehicle creates and stores electrical power generated from on- and off-board sources. The stored electricity drives electric motors that drive the wheels. The car can be plugged in if desired.
The onboard fuel capacity includes hydrogen, gasoline, E85 and E100 ethanol, diesel and biodiesel. The owner selects the cheapest and most abundant fuel. The car then selects the onboard energy source available to recharge itself. General Motors also teamed with Carnegie Mellon University to win the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Urban Challenge, a competition last year for driverless robotic vehicles where contestants’ vehicles negotiated urban streets with mixed traffic.
This is not your grandfather’s remote-controlled car. This one does not need a human onboard or remotely engaged to do anything other than give it a destination. It “sees” through short- and long-range radar sensors as well as video to process traffic signs, traffic lights, pedestrians, other vehicles, obstacles and everything else needed to get from point A to point B with no driver on board. It accelerates, brakes, turns, stops, starts and waits. It exhibits several human behaviors, one of the most important being avoidance. Unlike your teenager, it will not cause an accident.
In today’s U.S., a two-hour commute is considered long, but not out of the question for a good job. Would it ever be OK to have an eight-hour commute? Yes, if the driver could eat, watch a little TV and sleep for a few hours while the car drove itself to the workplace. There is a new trend in truck stops toward providing stalls with Internet access, room service, air conditioning and power: The truck cab becomes the hotel room. The commuter of tomorrow may have the option of forgoing a stationary home in favor of a sleep-able vehicle. Instead of renting an apartment in the suburbs, a parking stall is rented at a vehicle complex with vehicle recharging. A health club on site would provide the necessary biological conveniences. A longer commute would mean more rest.
Failure as an indicator of future success
These powerful market forces have opened the floodgates on personal mobility.
The issue that killed the 1980s incarnation of the automated highway was institutional, not technical. It had to do with the legal liabilities of the service providers in the case of accident. The failure of infrastructure-based control of vehicles is likely to stay permanent, because public agencies cannot afford basic traffic-signal timing much less taking control of a car on the freeway.
Several great technical innovations that have shaped our world have initially failed when introduced to the marketplace. Some people predicted cell phones would fail when it was discovered that they might cause brain tumors. America Online, which essentially offered much of what the Internet now offers, was initially a failure in the marketplace. GM’s OnStar was the brunt of jokes for years including the “blonde star” mock radio ad where a hapless driver locks herself inside her car and calls GM.
OnStar has taken off and is now a popular option for GM. The next version of OnStar will report the extent of vehicle damage after an accident and slow a vehicle to a controlled stop after it has been stolen. The automated highway concept may come back, driven by the market force of ever-increasing mobility. The new concept of the automated highway will emerge as an outgrowth of advanced onboard electronics, with individual vehicles becoming autonomous within the mixed traffic stream.
The traveler perspective—make it easy for me!
Travelers want comfortable, cheap and easy travel. Ease of travel means different things to different people, and understanding the differences is key to understanding the future of ITS. Handheld electronics are successful if they allow the consumer to do something the consumer wants to do: make a phone call, listen to music or play a game. The iPod is a little complicated, but once you learn how to download one song, you can download a thousand songs.
Dashboard electronics have only seen marginal success for three reasons: safety, interoperability and personalization. Many people have been turned off to using dashboard navigation systems because of the complexity involved in the most basic features.
The person most likely to want real-time traffic data on their navigation system is the same person who wants to avoid delay. If your navigation system requires you to delay yourself to stop your trip, find a parking space, then use a series of annoying text entry menus just to enter your destination, it works against itself.
The variables that define the continuum of ITS market penetration are complexity, time and cost. If an application reduces travel time but is complex and expensive, it has modest market potential. Onboard dashboard-based navigational systems might fall into this category. If you add real-time traffic information to the unit, it might push it into the “strong” category, provided the cost is reasonable.
If someone develops a time-saving application that is affordable and easy to use, that application has the highest market potential. An example comes from the experience of the Colorado DOT’s high-occupancy toll (HOT) lane project on I-25 in Denver.
According to Colorado Toll Enterprise Director Peggy Catlin, actual first-year operational revenues exceeded preoperational projections by 240%. That’s a killer app. Why did the public unexpectedly jump into the HOT lanes? The I-25 HOT lane provides a dramatic travel-time differential over the adjacent general-purpose lanes. The tolls are dynamic and reflect the travel-time differential based on a congestion pricing principle. And the same E-ZPass you use on the Denver region’s toll roads is all you need to participate. The consumer finds it simple, cheap and ecstatically pleasing.
The fourth criterion is more important and less marketable: safety. Although safety is important to all providers, it unfortunately gives limited boost to the marketability of products and services.
What’s hot and what’s not
To adequately assess the state of such a diversified industry at any given time would require several tomes. A more time-efficient approach is to look at the upper and lower boundaries and ignore the vast middle of the industry. It is useful to take a subjective look at what is hot and what is not so hot in the industry today in terms of systems, technologies and procurement methods. In addition, items that have apparently died and possibly been resurrected in another form are worth noting.
Inclusion in the “what’s hot and what’s not” tabulations is based on a few highly subjective criteria as follows:
- Positive articles in ITS trade journals;
- New projects under way or on the horizon to deploy the technology or system;
- Buzz at dedicated ITS conferences as well as IBTTA, ITE and TRB; and
- U.S. DOT-focused initiatives and seed money
What is not used as a criterion is relative merit, in other words, what should be hot. There is no doubt that traffic-signal systems and freeway management systems including ramp metering, especially when smartly controlled from a TMC, deliver more tangible benefits in terms of congestion management and reduction than all of the other strategies combined. Unfortunately, with only a few exceptions, these systems have fallen as the first casualty of the state DOT funding crises in the U.S.
One of two notable exceptions is Florida, where freeway management systems and TMCs have been built and are expanding in all urban areas. In Miami, even ramp metering, in spite of an initial delay attributable to an unraveling software developer, is being deployed in a no-holds-barred battle with severe freeway congestion.
Florida DOT’s southern Districts 6 and 4 also have jumped on the HOT lanes bandwagon in what will probably be the most cost-efficient and easily implemented of the U.S. DOT’s Urban Partnership pilot projects.
In spite of a few exceptions, the reason these systems are not hot in terms of national deployment is because of neglect. Some urban areas where freeway management systems were deployed in the 1980s and ’90s have let the systems fall into disrepair and obsolescence. In the ’80s, freeway management systems and TMC construction were the hottest thing in traffic management.
There is no question that the ITS movement of the ’90s, intended to advocate such systems, actually slowed progress in freeway management by diluting existing funding by stretching it out over a broader set of initiatives. An example was the arduous multiyear development of a National ITS Architecture, which did little more than confirm among thousands of new stakeholders what was already known to be effective by industry insiders.
Top of the hots
Without any doubt, the congestion pricing project in New York City is currently the most important ITS project in the U.S. It has every element of a landmark project. If successful, it will surely lead to projects in several congested urban centers. In a presentation to IBTTA at their recent Finance Summit in Washington, D.C., the associate administrator of the Office of Operations of the FHWA, Jeffrey Paniati, explained the five Urban Partnership Agreements (UPAs) of the U.S. DOT’s six-point Congestion Initiative. The NYC congestion pricing initiative stands alone as demonstrating a new approach for the U.S. The other four are equally advantageous for their own merits, however they consist of tried-and-true methods proven already elsewhere in the U.S. Lessons learned from NYC will undoubtedly have a major influence on the future of ITS.
Congestion pricing as applied to city street networks is a red-hot yet “green” ITS strategy designed to manage congestion by charging drivers who enter a congested zone. Congestion pricing technology has been available for 20 years, however until recently congestion pricing has been unpopular and often politically unfeasible. The social implications of congestion pricing have resulted in past project failures, Hong Kong being the most notable.
In the past 10 years, user fee-based transportation services and pay-as-you-go concepts have slowly crept into the social vernacular and become more politically feasible. During the same time, the toll industry has aggressively deployed improved electronic toll collection (and violation processing) technologies that have gained widespread public acceptance. Changing attitudes and improved technology have led to the successful congestion pricing strategies.
Video image-based congestion pricing has been successfully deployed in London. A congestion pricing experiment has been successfully conducted in Stockholm, where the system was installed, monitored for a period, studied and a follow up public survey was taken to determine acceptance. The survey showed that the project was acceptable to the public, and as a result the system has been turned on and is scheduled to be expanded.
The New York City project has been highly controversial, as expected. The U.S. DOT has a stake in the project, having selected it as one of five UPAs as part of the FHWA Congestion Initiative. The support from U.S. DOT has been a help to local political advocates to overcome local political opposition.
The most important aspect of political survivability of congestion pricing in New York will be attributable to the way that it was packaged by advocates as simply one of many sustainability initiatives designed to improve the quality of life in NYC. Mayor Michael Bloomberg maintained, and even increased, his support of congestion pricing in spite of opposition from the public and state legislators in Albany.
In ITS technology, low-cost and light infrastructure devices and communications systems have emerged as these technologies have become more reliable. Digital video and sharing of video has reached a level of proliferation that is likely to result in saturation during the next 10 years.
Procurement of ITS by the public sector has overcome the limitations of using traditional low-bid roadway contracts that are a poor method for purchasing electronic technologies. The FHWA’s investment in training and advocacy for proven systems engineering principles has been worthwhile and had a positive effect on those projects involving software development and system integration.
As ITS progresses, some good ideas have died and been resurrected in other forms as dictated by technology developments and market forces. The best example is the “Mayday” idea for public-sector rural ITS that was overtaken by the implementation of OnStar by the private sector.
Intelligent transportation systems have been woven into the fabric of modern society. The world is facing a highway congestion crisis of epic proportions. There is a reason there is a helipad at the White House, and it has to do more with traffic congestion than national security.
The ITS industry will survive as long as it stays focused on preventing further loss of transportation mobility and conforms to the desires of the average American commuter. ITS offers a way to manage and survive the delay that results from the unbridled demands of personal mobility. The desire we all share to be mobile is the problem, and if ITS can get us where we are going in a predictable and reasonable time frame, it is the solution.
RSS: Roads & Bridges Articles
