The road more traveled

Last year, the Department of Transportation released the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Strategic Research Plan, which defined the agency's strategic direction for such systems over the ensuing half decade. The plan's goal is the creation of a national, multi-modal surface transportation system that leverages a next-generation communications environment that connects vehicles, the ITS infrastructure and passengers' portable devices. It first will address the market-driven obstacles to widespread installation of ITS technology in vehicles, as well as the institutional and policy issues associated with infrastructure deployment. Deciding which should be addressed first — vehicles or infrastructure — could hinge on a National Highway Transportation Safety Administration regulatory decision in 2013 about whether to require such technology in new vehicles.

The genesis of the plan occurred in late 2000, when the ITS program and its partners determined that the interaction between vehicles (V2V) and between vehicles and the infrastructure (V2I) held the potential to solve highway-safety problems and other difficult transportation challenges. The core of the program is IntelliDrive, a suite of technologies and applications that uses wireless communications to provide connectivity with and between vehicles; between vehicles and roadway infrastructure; and among vehicles, infrastructure and wireless consumer devices. The multimodal initiative aims to enable safe, interoperable wireless connectivity to support safety, mobility and environmental enhancements.

The program is funded at $100 million per year. The funding will assist the agency in 2011 to test the possibility of using the 5.9 GHz band for ITS safety applications. The selected technology is known to provide secure and reliable high-speed transmissions by using low-latency, short-range communications. Such research may lead to additional applications that will be developed using IntelliDrive's open standards for V2V and V2I communications. These applications could reduce deadly crashes through real-time advisories and warnings.

In addition, the agency will continue to research V2V communications in an attempt to answer key questions, such as whether vehicle-based safety applications using V2V communications are effective. This specific research is designed to determine whether regulatory action by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration is warranted to speed the adoption of such safety capabilities.

S&T researchers also will continue to work on V2I, with an initial focus on applications that relay traffic signal timing information to vehicles. In addition, there will be additional research on real-time data capture and management that will assess what kind of traffic, transit and freight data are available today from various sources.

Among future initiatives, the agency will continue to examine what technologies can help people and goods transfer from one mode of travel (car, bus, truck or train) or route to another for the fastest and most environmentally friendly trip. The research seeks to enable agencies and companies to better manage their systems and also will focus on how vehicle-based data on current weather conditions can be used by travelers and transportation agencies to enable decision-making that takes such conditions and future weather forecasts into account. Finally, the agency will focus on mode-specific research that includes active traffic management, international border crossing, roadside infrastructure, commercial vehicles, electronic payment and maritime applications.

— Mary Rose Roberts