Thousands descend on Orlando, Fla., to talk transportation technology

cascadia center staff

By Larry Ehl

When you travel today -- whether by car, bus, rail, plane or bike -- technology made your trip safer, faster and cleaner than in the past. That technology may have been obvious to you (hybrid vehicles, GPS) or not (traffic light synchronization, interstate weigh-in-motion for trucks).  

Yet our transportation network can be much, much safer, efficient and cleaner. Every year nearly 40,000 people are killed on our highways. Congestion cost about $101 billion and 4.8 billion wasted hours in 2010. Transportation accounts for nearly 30% of our greenhouse gases.

Making transportation safer, more efficient and cleaner was the focus of a recent conference -- the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) World Congress, held Oct. 16-20, in Orlando, Fla. --  attended by about 8,000 public- and private-sector transportation specialists from more than 65 countries.

The conference consisted of more than 300 sessions and hundreds of exhibits -- many on cutting‐edge transportation solutions for traffic congestion and management, highway and vehicle safety, next-generation traveler information, and mobility and operations.

Reflecting the public's (and the public sector's) desire for accountability and efficiency, over 50 sessions focused on performance measures and standards.

Brian Mistele, CEO of Inrix, has said, "Our efforts with transportation agencies worldwide are driving better intelligence from the vast data stores in ways that help them plan, build, manage and measure the performance of our road networks for a fraction of the cost."

The ITS World Congress also featured a number of sustainability sessions detailing the potential for improving air and water quality through current and possible future technologies, particularly in freight transportation.

Some of the conference sessions were very practical. Traffic signal synchronization, for example, not only helps people travel more quickly, it can reduce emissions by reducing vehicle starts/stops -- a significant cause of emissions particularly for trucks.

Another practical focus was "smart parking." An example is Streetline, which offers a smartphone/tablet application that helps drivers easily find and pay for available parking and access information such as parking space time limits, pricing, whether meters take credit cards or coins, in cities across the country. I tested the application and it was pretty amazing. Streetline recently won The Wall Street Journal 2011 Technology Innovation Award.

Another vendor, ParkingCarma, is working on smart parking applications for the freight trucking industry, especially in California.

Connected vehicles

"Eye-popping" is the only way to describe sessions and demonstrations of connected vehicle technology. Using GPS, Wi‐Fi sensors and a special short‐range radio frequency, vehicles can relay information to each other about hazardous road conditions or a looming risk of a crash.  Drivers receive real-time safety warnings and information. According to U.S. Department of Transportation estimates, connected vehicle technology has the potential to address 81% of all unimpaired driver‐related crash scenarios. Many of the fender-benders caused by inattentive drivers in stop-and-go traffic -- which quickly backs up traffic -- could be eliminated.

Nady Baoules, part of General Motors' Global Research and Development division says, "Intelligent vehicle technologies will ultimately enable autonomous driving and cars that don't crash. Not only will these vehicles revolutionize personal mobility, they also promise to dramatically decrease fuel consumption an emissions, greatly enhance traffic safety and provide significantly more value for consumers."

Learn more at the Connected Vehicle Research Web page of USDOT's Research and Innovative Technology Administration. Wired Magazine has a collection of articles about "autonomous vehicles," including one about a "self-steering robotic tractor using GPS and a raft of smart sensors to drive over farmland, till the fields and orientate itself to different terrain following a pre-programmed route with no one at the wheel."

In my home base region of the Pacific Northwest, the Cascadia Center for Regional Development (Cascadia Center) of Discovery Institute, West Coast Corridor Coalition (WCCC) and the International Mobility and Trade Corridor Project (IMTC) are just three of the many organizations working on intelligent transportation projects and solutions to enable people and goods to move quicker, safer and cleaner. (Cascadia Center and the WCCC helped sponsor my attendance at the ITS World Conference.)

Cascadia Center, WCCC and IMTC -- working toward solutions

Since 1993, the Cascadia Center has convened public- and private-sector interests in order to learn about and develop "Clean, Green and Smart" transportation, particularly in key high traffic corridors like West Coast interstates. The Seattle-based transportation policy center has partnered with Microsoft Corp. to offer "Beyond Oil" conferences, which have focused on a range of issues, such integrating ITS in West Coast states and traffic light synchronization. Presentations from the last major "Beyond Oil" conference, held in 2009, are found here.

The WCCC "advocates collaborative solutions to transportation system challenges on the West Coast Corridor" and includes representatives from Washington, Oregon, California and Alaska. The WCCC's ITS and Environment Committee is pretty self-explanatory. Its purpose is to regularly convene public- and private-sector interests in part to learn about how ITS can improve operations and security in ways that also improve the environment and travel time. In April 2009, with the assistance of the Cascadia Center, the committee developed the Clean, Green, and Smart Best Practices Manual.

The IMTC is a U.S.-Canada coalition of business and government entities that "identifies and promotes improvements to mobility and security" for four U.S.-British Columbia border crossings which have a combined heavy public and commercial traffic volume. One of their projects focused on expanding the Advanced Traveler Information Systems to provide travelers with better border-crossing traffic conditions. This enables public and commercial travelers to make more informed travel choices, saving time and money.

And not to be forgotten are the transportation departments of West Coast states and regional organizations like SANDAG, which are among the nation's leaders in developing and applying ITS to move people and goods quicker, safer and cleaner. Also important are advocacy organizations like Mobility 21, which help build support for ITS and other approaches to improving the transportation network.

Sources: Quotations and data gathered from ITS World Conference news releases, personal notes from sessions, and "Transportation and economic development," IBM Institute for Business Value.