There’s a fascinating view of future urban transportation in the science fiction film The Fifth Element, where the problem of increased demand on the roadways has apparently been solved by creating multiple tiers of moving traffic — in the air. This is around the year 2215 and vehicles are capable of flight.

Despite the fancy, there is still a lesson here, which is that building more roads to carry more traffic simply won’t be much of an option anymore. According to the Federal Highway Administration, in many areas the construction of more roadways and additional lanes to existing roads is no longer feasible or credible as the primary solution to traffic congestion.

In the past 10 years, the amount of travel on the Interstate Highway System has grown by 30%, and the demand for travel is expected to increase by another 50% over the next 20 years. For drivers and transportation system users, this means more lost time. In 1995, Americans spent more than 2 billion hours in traffic jams — that’s 83 million days or more than 22,800 years. Nationally, the annual cost of congestion in lost productivity is over $100 billion, and that’s not counting the cost of wasted fuel and environmental damage.

So, if building more roads is unworkable, but traffic continues to grow, what can we do to get more out of the roads we have? It has long been the dream of federal and state governments to get us to use mass transportation enough to make a significant impact on the number of vehicles on the road. Clearly, that dream has not been realized and probably won’t until vehicle ownership becomes prohibitive.

The only real option left is to put the roads to better use in all areas — public transportation, government and commercial fleet management, and for individual drivers — using Intelligent Transportation Systems.

While safety is always important, it is not the focal point of most ITS proponents and transportation engineers. In most of the printed information and ITS studies, the real emphasis is on moving traffic more efficiently to increase overall productivity, save money, and to reduce wear and tear on the roads and the environment. Actually, in a way, safety would seem to be one of the few real problems for ITS to overcome, and that only from the driver’s inability to handle ITS information (see article, page 24).

The U.S. DOT and the FHWA have come up with some interesting statistics concerning the benefits of larger-scale ITS:

• A highway accident increases the risk of an additional accident by six times, and cities that monitor roads are able to remove stalled vehicles 50% faster than cities that do not. An ITS incident-management system that costs $600,000 to operate can generate $1.4 million in benefits annually.

• Freeway management systems can shrink travel time by as much as 48%, increase travel speed by up to 62%, and increase freeway capacity by as much as 25%.

• Traffic-signal systems such as stoplights using ITS technology can decrease travel time by up to 15%, increase travel speed by as much as 22%, and shorten travel delays by up to 37%.

• It is estimated that 34% more highway capacity is needed just to keep pace with the growth of vehicle-miles traveled. For the 50 largest urban areas in the country, the 10-year cost of building roads would be approximately $150 billion. To build an ITS infrastructure from scratch would cost $10 billion and provide 67% of the required capacity.

• The U.S. has 60,000 buses for public transportation. Around 11,000 currently or will soon have automated vehicle location devices that will allow control centers to determine their location, monitor their movement, and adjust their schedules.

"People will get information much faster and have better control over traffic," Johnson said. "Optimally, ITS will reduce travel time and be a breakthrough in safety. It’s a technology that can prevent the crash."

Collins said,"The major benefits of ITS to drivers are increased safety — both in accident prevention and personal security — faster, easier commuting through such advances as real-time information for trip planning, electronic toll collection, and in-vehicle navigation systems, and a host of technologies that will make drivers better informed, such as electronic message signs, strategically placed kiosks, and route-specific traffic information."

For highway agencies on every level, the promise seems to be that ITS will make work easier and much more efficient.

Collins said, "Deployment of ITS technologies makes the job of a highway agency easier because state-of-the-art technologies provide easier traveling for everyone, whatever their mode of transportation, and make freight movement safer and more efficient, all at less cost than simply building more capacity. It also enables better transportation planning, because ITS real-time data is more comprehensive than traffic count samples."

Johnson said the major change affecting agencies on the state DOT level would be in building the infrastructure that will allow them to control traffic. With all of the various components such as traveler information, highway management, and weather information, the combined impact will be much greater efficiency. She said that ITS "puts the DOTs in the retail industry. They will now have to be on call to solve problems 24 hours a day."

Typical ITS installation revolves around computerized equipment that feeds information into a traffic management center

The best analogy from the past that Johnson could think of relating to ITS was air traffic control. "[Once] we didn’t use to need to control air traffic, but now it has to be managed [precisely]. In the same way, we need to manage the operations of our surface transportation systems."

The U.S. DOT reports that for the cost of approximately eight miles of urban freeway — $300 million — a metropolitan area the size of Washington, D.C., could design and completely implement an ITS infrastructure.

Johnson said, "We prefer people using our cost tables [available on Web site], but for the purpose of giving someone an idea...we estimate you’d spend $300 million for a city the size of Washington." But that estimate is actually misleading, she says, because it is based on a city without any kind of ITS — and no major city is without some kind of ITS.

"Intelligent transportation systems represent a dramatic shift in our thinking about how we invest in surface transportation," says Collins. "The choice is no longer between ever-worsening traffic congestion and expensive new highway construction."

Collins said that computer-controlled intersections in Oakland County, Michigan, "have increased vehicle speeds by 19%, reduced total injuries by 19%, and serious injuries by 100%, the results of only a $70-million ITS investment. Kansas City, Missouri, invested $2.3 million in ITS technologies to increase the efficiency of its bus system, and is saving $1.5 million capital expense and $404,000 operating expense a year, amortizing its investment in just two years."

The deployment of ITS throughout the country is not without a few problems. As with any technology-based industry, the most serious problem for vendors and system buyers is one that only time can fix.

"Standards are the biggest problem," Johnson said, adding that the vendor ITS industry is currently fragmented and decentralized.

Collins concurred, saying, "Among the major problems facing ITS vendors is the need for standards and protocols within the context of a clear national system architecture, so that what works in one city or region of the country will work in the others. Like computer e-mail systems, the technologies of ITS must be able to work together, to communicate with each other."

The other major problem is not only what is being called driver overload (see related story), but deciding what the driver needs to know first. "We need to prioritize the information that drivers get," Johnson said.

At the ITS America exposition in May, Arlan Stehney, of the Society of Automotive Engineers, asked, "What message do we give the driver first? That he’s about to have a collision with a truck, or that there’s a McDonald’s coming up at the next exit?"

There have already been numerous studies on the dangers of cellular phone use among drivers. Add that to cigarette lighters, clocks, radios, and CD players — all common now — and you can see what kind of problems an 80-digit keypad, digital readout, computer monitor, and other in-vehicle functions could cause. Stehney said that one of the problems from the vehicle standpoint was that, "we kind of go gizmo-crazy in ITS."

Collins is more positive about it. "While some ITS technologies may take a little getting use to, like any new technology, we see no major problems for drivers — in fact, we see far fewer problems, provided the systems can communicate with each other," he said.

So, how long will it be before most of us deal with major ITS? Sooner than you would think.

There are already government mandates on certain ITS for commercial vehicles by 2003, Johnson said. The federal DOT’s role would be to implement as much ITS as possible. "If you were a typewriter salesman, would you sell people an old Smith Corona, or a new word processing system?" she asked.

"ITS America, the U.S. DOT, and other groups have established a goal of deploying basic ITS services for consumers of passenger and freight transportation across the nation by the year 2005," Collins said. "At a minimum, U.S. DOT wants to trim 15% off the time it takes to commute in 75 of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas by that year...ITS technology is happening fast, and it’s happening everywhere."

"For local agencies interested in ITS deployment, it would be wise to contact the state department of transportation and the regional offices of the FHWA and the Federal Transit Administration to identify applicable sources of funding," Collins says. "Then, you might want to identify the stakeholders, seek their active participation, and keep them informed. You may want to organize an action group for local governments, transportation authorities, transportation companies, and other users of the services."