The U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) has operated the Intelligent Transportations Systems Joint Program Office (ITS JPO) for decades, and the recent technological advances in vehicle connectivity and smart infrastructure design have led to a number of programs adaptable for state and local governments.
The ITS JPO Data Program is a multimodal effort that works in partnership with the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Transit Administration, the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, other federal agencies, state and local governments, academia, and the private sector.
The program has four overall principles: increasing adoption of efficient and secure data-sharing architectures within ITS deployments; sharing ITS research data to fuel third-party research and application development; making privacy-by-design principles operational; and providing strategic direction for the ITS community.
Several data products made available from the Smart Cities Challenge, Connected Vehicle Pilots and other ITS JPO initiatives are working to better the way people move around. This includes data surrounding vehicle automation, collision avoidance, truck platooning, signal-phase timing and vehicle-travel time.
Because infrastructure projects are more controlled at the state level, the ITS JPO has set up the Research Data Exchange, where registered users can download data from next-gen transportation projects.
Once solutions such as infrastructure-to-vehicle safety alerts and automated shuttle data can be proven, it is up to the cities and states themselves to take that information and run with it.
