Straight From the Top

Transportation Management + Engineering recently interviewed Christine Johnson, director, ITS joint program office, U.S. Department of Transportation, for the first installment of the magazine?s Industry Icon feature.

The department?s efforts to save lives, time and money through transportation operations and ITS are extensive. I?ll mention some current projects as well as resources recently developed to help jurisdictions around the country deploy ITS and operate their transportation systems efficiently.

We have a number of exciting operational tests beginning and under way. Among them are projects that involve expediting freight through international borders, the ITS Public Safety Program, the Intelligent Vehicle Initiative and the Foretell test in the Midwest for road weather information. We expect to initiate soon an operational test to improve highway work-zone operations by means of intelligent transportation systems.

We recently developed and began offering on the web a downloadable "Roadway Operations Self-Assessment Tool" that state and local transportation agencies can use to assess their roadway operations performance and to find ideas of how to achieve better operations.

In June, we released two products that also are available on our website: In one convenient desk reference, the ITS Resource Guide directs you to ITS benefits information and to everything you need to know about the department?s ITS resources. We also introduced a traveler information video, "Scheduled Lives, Stressful Drives," that demonstrates how traveler information can return control to travelers by giving them choices about time, route and mode of travel.

The department?s key traveler information effort is deployment of "511"?America?s Traveler Information Telephone Number. Following approval last summer of our petition for a three-digit dialing code, the Federal Communications Commission assigned "511" for local traveler information. In June 2001, the northern Kentucky-Cincinnati, Ohio, metropolitan area became the first to implement "511."

The end of 2001 expects several more "511" implementations, and within five years we expect to see "511" implemented broadly across the U.S.

This summer, we plan to offer a video on traffic signal timing that demonstrates how refining and retuning signals smoothes out traffic flow and reduces congestion.

And a key activity for us, of course, is participating in the development of the administration?s proposal for surface transportation reauthorization. A major activity related to reauthorization is the 10-year ITS Program Plan and Research Agenda as well as the National Summit on Transportation Operations to be held Oct. 16-18 in Columbia, Md.

There is no single cure for traffic congestion. Instead, there are a number of strategies that will add capacity, making things better for the driver in a very crowded situation. Transit will be important, but it will be expensive; it is not enough.

There are two important next steps: data and institutional reform.

We have made good progress in ITS deployment during the last three or four years. We have "spots" of infrastructure across the U.S., the need for what might be called "ITS data infrastructure" is here. The demand for cheap, relatively ubiquitous and relatively uniform "content" or data has become acute.

It has been estimated that about 6% of our network was instrumented in the early ?90s; about 16% of it in 1997; and 22% by the end of the century. At that rate we?ve got 10 to 15 years before we get a fully instrumented system.

To get beyond limits of "congestion ahead" signs that U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta frequently refers to, we?ve got to advance from 20% instrumented to 60-80% of the system producing information?whether that is from the public sector or private sector. And we?ve got to expand our current focus on freeways to major arterials as well.

Data?automatically collected, somewhat standardized, integratable and system wide at an appropriate scale?has become the Holy Grail for both the private and public sectors. Although I see some truly exciting possibilities for capturing this Holy Grail emerging from the private sector, such as using cellular telephones or a vehicle with total situational awareness as a probe, no business model has emerged that can provide a return on an investment of the scale we are talking about.

In spite of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) opening up major portions of the highway trust fund to ITS infrastructure deployment, it is not happening at that scale in the public sector, either.

Data, however, is only the first step in having a technology-enabled system.

Once we have the data, whether from the public sector or private sector, data must be used in a meaningful way to help people. To do this, major cultural and institutional reform is needed.

We are largely a project-driven culture, with project-driven policies and project-driven legislation. As a result, we have managed with relative ease to get some 2,200 overhead message signs up and numerous Transportation Operations Centers in place before we had sufficient content to make them truly useful. Signs and buildings were projects that could be designed and built; they fit the existing culture.

They have to be operated! And that stretches the underpinning organizational fabric of the highway culture. It is like asking the construction company that built the shopping center to now turn around and run it. That company probably is not organized, staffed or even financed in a way that would allow it to do that. In many?but I hasten to add not all?instances, neither are we. Institutional transformation will be essential.

There is no institutionalized planning process for operating the system. The result is no one is accountable for the way the system is operated today.

Who do you call if you had a miserable commute? Who gets fired if the system routinely breaks down?

In a transit property?you know who to call, and the CEO knows who gets fired!

If technology is going to be harnessed to take on what is truly becoming a national crisis of congestion, I believe five elements are essential:

1. ITS infrastructure;

2. Institutionalized, integrated planning, execution and accountability (institutionalized so it isn?t a one-time event);

3. Performance measures?to help hold agencies accountable for their performance;

4. Communication with the customer; and

5. Spending the money it takes. "Operations" is not a low cost alternative to capacity expansion any more than system preservation is.

As we move into reauthorization, I believe these two issues?data and institutional reform?must be high on the agenda, not just for the ITS community, but for the sake of the nation. Otherwise, we will not be able to meet the crisis of congestion that is looming ahead.

It is my own belief that there must be a genuine national public-private partnership, meaning shared risk; shared benefit; shared contribution.

The U.S. Department of Transportation asked ITS America to coordinate development of a comprehensive 10-year ITS Program Plan and Research Agenda. In consultation with the ITS and transportation community, ITS America drafted a framework that was presented to more than 200 stakeholders at the National ITS Summit in April. Keynoted by Secretary Mineta, participants in breakout sessions focused on four topic areas: promoting safety; promoting efficiency and economy; enhancing mobility, access to transportation and the productivity of travel; and on safeguarding the environment and reducing energy consumption.

The resulting draft was discussed extensively at the June 2001 Intelligent Transportation Society of America annual meeting in Miami. ITS America, in its capacity as a Federal Advisory Committee, will present the final plan to the department in the fall as formal program advice. Once completed, the document is anticipated to serve as the foundation of the ITS portion of the next surface transportation authorizing legislation, due for enactment by Sept. 30, 2003.

The 10-year plan is a dynamic document that will be discussed, debated and articulated in many forums, including the National Transportation Operations Dialogue Summit Oct. 16-18 in Columbia, Md., and in Congressional hearings over the next two years.

We will continue progress toward achieving our goal of ITS deployment in America?s 75 largest cities by 2006. Facilitating deployments under the Commercial Vehicle Information Systems and Networks program will continue.

I mentioned earlier the key emerging challenges related to data and institutional reform, which we can expect to be a discussion point for reauthorization.

Privacy issues and driver distraction will continue to receive our attention.

But there are exciting opportunities on the horizon, particularly if we effectively deal with these challenges: end-to-end, personalized traffic information available through varied means?"511" being the most universal in the short term?full integration of the crash response from notification to emergency room response, including crash site and traffic management in between. I see major productivity breakthroughs possible with real information sharing across company lines at the intermodal terminals. I think we could achieve the cost savings in Health and Human Services transportation that we talked about in the ?70s with full use of GPS and smart card technology. And the granddaddy of them all is the intelligent vehicle. That will be the next quantum leap in safety.

The administration places a high priority on using intelligent transportation systems technologies to improve transportation operations and save lives, time and money. It is early in the process to speculate on what Congress will decide with regard to funding for ITS and operations. As the 10-year plan is further discussed and evaluated and as Congressional hearings begin on reauthorization, the funding picture will become clearer.

Standards support the interoperability of ITS. Therefore, the department?s ITS Standards Program is working toward the widespread use of standards. Through cooperative agreements with five standards development organizations, the Standards Program is accelerating development of about 100 non-proprietary, industry-based, consensus ITS standards, and is encouraging public-sector participation in the development process. To expedite deployment of nationally interoperable ITS systems and services, the department supports specific ITS standards initiatives, especially in areas that have significant public benefit.

The department?s Standards Program is maturing from a primarily standards development program to a standards deployment program by rapidly moving into standards deployment support. Such support includes testing and case studies, providing standards resource information, supporting training and technical assistance to deployers, developing "lessons learned" guidance and assessing the readiness of standards for deployment.

In addition, the program is coordinating the department?s standards efforts with international standardization activities.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is committed to improving operations of the transportation network to squeeze the greatest capacity from new and existing infrastructure and at the same time improve its safety. The audience that Transportation Management & Engineering is targeting includes important players in the transportation operations community.

The greater and more extensive the dialogue on transportation operations, the more successful our efforts will be to improve transportation through improved operations and ITS. I wish TM&E every success.