Increasingly burdensome highway congestion threatens to further slow industry’s ability to move product. Researchers looking into expanding development of relatively new technology for building Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are hoping to ease the gridlock.

The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has estimated that a collective five billion hours per year are lost as trucks and automobiles sit idle in traffic. In many parts of the US, the highway infrastructure has reached its capacity, not only with commuters, but also with trucks transporting freight. As far as the transportation of goods is concerned, the nation’s highways have become a clogged artery in the bloodline of industry. To make matters worse, the volume of highway traffic is expected to double by 2020, a veritable logistics nightmare. Add to this startling prediction the sobering fact that traffic accidents, in addition to the measureless stress that they bring to those involved, account for a whopping $25 billion in annual damages, and the impetus behind developing Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) becomes more than evident.

ITS is a catch all title for the harnessing of available technology to guide, maintain and monitor traffic. The highest profile example of this initiative is the research being done to design self-guiding vehicle systems. The origin of guided-vehicle research can be traced back to the 1939 World’s Fair in New York when GM unveiled the concept as part of their “Futurama” exhibit. Though the idea of automatically guided vehicles was considered far-fetched at the time, serious exploration of automated vehicle control was undertaken during World War II and was picked back up in the mid-60s. From the mid-60s up through the 80s, Ohio State University carried the torch of research in this field. Then, in 1986, the California Department of Transportation and the University of California founded the PATH (Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways) Program, with the hopes of alleviating California’s increasing highway congestion. In 1991, the ISTEA (Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act) was legislated by Congress, allocating Federal funding for the development of ITS technology. Finally, in 1997, five decades of research came to fruition when a section of California highway was closed off to demonstrate the then-current state of ITS. Automatically guided cars sped along the stretch, kept in formation by radio beams and radar, each ready to respond in a fraction of a second to any fluctuation in speed or distance to other vehicles. Inside the cars, people rode along comfortably, content in letting the vehicles drive themselves. ITS had proven itself a viable reality.

Though ITS has yet to put on such a demonstration in the new millennium, this technology is especially promising in regards to commercial trucking. Since one of the expressed goals of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act is to support a safe and seamless intrastate and interstate transportation system, the program includes the development of electronic clearance, freight mobility and onboard safety monitoring systems, automated administrative processes and hazardous materials incident response. A possible benefit of these developments would be productivity gains for private carriers of more than 25% per truck per day as well as the significant savings associated with hazardous material incident response programs, estimated at $1.7 million annually per state. Electronic clearance and automated roadside inspections are estimated to reduce fatalities by 14 to 32%. In addition, lane-keeping and obstacle avoidance technologies could prevent a great deal of accidents in which commercial vehicles are run off the road.

Advances in computer technology have also refined the science of traffic analysis. Not so long ago, traffic patterns were predicted by statistical models that treated the subject as a homogeneous fluid, routinely ignoring the dynamics of different driving styles and the mercurial nature of human behavior, not to mention a host of other variables such as the weather and the environment. Now, with the ability to approach the traffic phenomenon with a far greater mathematical complexity, engineers and architects are better able to simulate, and thus better understand and plan around, potential traffic snafus. This type of advanced planning bodes well for the trucking and transportation industry, not only by promising to expedite the delivery of goods but also by better protecting the lives of drivers.

In addition to its promised advantages, ITS is currently making a mark with devices that relay the location of vehicles by using global positioning satellites. Dedicated web sites that are accessible to palm pilots and wireless laptops can monitor, step-by-step, the movement of trucks, freight and public transportation. Someday soon, the location of personal vehicles may even be tracked via the Internet.

Of course, as is with all predicted technologies, the full scale adoption of ITS is hardly guaranteed. Public sentiment and people’s inherent love of self-mobility will have a lot to do with how quickly the move to complete traffic automation is made. ITS is still in its beginning stages and, in order for it to grow, the interest of the private sector is required. Perhaps as traffic conditions worsen, and rapid transportation becomes even more of a concern, the resources needed to develop ITS will become available. In that hopefully not-so-distant future, highway transportation might be only a matter of programming a destination and then sitting back to enjoy the ride.

Sources: Digital Recorders Licenses Internet Transportation Information Technology
Allan Maurer
LocalBusiness.com, Jan. 24, 2001
http://www.localbusiness.com/Story/0,1118,CLT_592749,00.html

Frequently Asked Questions
Intelligent Transportation Systems Page
Department of Transportation Web Site
http://www.its.dot.gov/faqs.htm

Intelligent Transportation Systems: An Evolving Technology
Bill Cannon
Motor Age, Sept. 1998
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m3102/n9_v117/21129473/print.jhtml

Intelligent Transportation Systems
MIT Web Site, News Clips
http://hippo.mit.edu/news_clips.htm