1.0 Introduction

U.S. highway deaths continue to climb (43,000 in 2003) and the ever-increasing demand for travel by highway and public transit is causing the transportation system to reach the limits of its existing capacity, resulting in growing traffic congestion that robs Americans of time and money. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technologies offer a clear opportunity to improve transportation safety, relieve congestion, and enhance productivity.

Since the mid 1990's, the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) has been accumulating information regarding levels of ITS deployment in the United States, and associated benefits, costs, and lessons learned. With this publication, we are introducing the collection of lessons learned information as a new resource for ITS managers, executives, planners, designers, deployers, and researchers.

The ITS vision includes a wide collection of applications that integrate surface transportation infrastructure with the vehicles that use it. Many existing applications of deployed ITS will contribute to the realization of this vision. This document focuses on the benefits, costs, and lessons learned through the deployment of the intelligent infrastructure and intelligent vehicles. Examples include: advanced traffic signal control systems, electronic transit fare payment systems, ramp meters, and collision avoidance systems.

In order to apply ITS services most effectively, decision makers require benefits and costs information about the ITS they are considering as well as documented lessons learned from the experiences of others. To be most effective, these inputs should be supplemented with information that describes the context from which the data were derived. As technology evolves, the choices available change. Often, several technologies are combined in a single integrated system, providing a higher level of benefits than any single technology. The costs of these technology investments, not only the one-time, initial costs, but also the costs to operate and maintain them, are of interest to transportation agencies.

This report is a continuation of a series of reports providing a snapshot of the information collected by the USDOT ITS Joint Program Office (JPO) on the impact of ITS applications on the surface transportation network, and the cost of these applications. The last report, ITS Benefits and Costs: 2003 Update, was published in May 2003.[32] Benefit and cost information in the report is drawn from the ITS Benefits and Costs Databases, regularly updated repositories for this information, available on the Internet at www.benefitcost.its.dot.gov.

New in the 2005 report is the introduction of summaries of lessons learned from ITS planning, deployment, operation, maintenance, and evaluation experience; the previous report contained only benefits and costs information. The ITS JPO has just recently initiated the process of capturing these lessons, and this report presents summaries of some of the first few collected. An ITS Lessons Learned Database is under development and planned to be available in the summer of 2005, when it will be publicly accessible via the Internet. Because the Lessons Learned Database is just getting under way as this document is being written, this document focuses on providing an introductory overview.

The benefits and costs information contained in this 2005 report has been significantly updated since the previous report. The report includes 26 new benefits findings that did not appear in the prior report, representing 20 percent of the 128 findings documented in this edition. Forty-six new system cost examples are provided in this report (49 percent of the 93 examples in the document). Throughout the report, new costs and benefits data are highlighted with a NEW bar, as shown below.

(New) Signifies a new entry

In documenting the benefits of ITS, this report provides an assessment of the effect of ITS applications on several important goal areas, such as safety and mobility, further described later in this report. These assessments are built from findings in the ITS Benefits Database, incorporating additions since the completion of the last report. While the assessments are based on the authors' review of all study findings, the examples provided in this document are only a portion of the total number of studies documented in the Benefits Database. The impact assessment for each ITS application area is presented through a rating system, as shown in Table 1.0.1. These ratings were developed through individual review of the database content by the authors, with additional discussion among the authors to establish the final ratings presented in this report. A particular rating was assigned if one or more of the reasons in the rationale column in Table 1.0.1 was evident in reviewing the evaluations of a given ITS application in the Benefits Database.

Table 1.0.1 – Definition of Impact Ratings for Assessment of ITS Applications

Symbol	Impact Rating	Rationale
++	substantial positive impacts	several studies with positive findings documented impact of relatively large magnitude
+	positive impacts	several studies documenting positive findings though the impact may be small or moderate single, relatively rigorous study documented a positive impact
0	negligible impact	studies performed found little significant impact
+/-	mixed results	studies have found both positive and negative impacts on a given measure
?	not enough data	usually, only a single study is available, and results cannot be taken to indicate a trend studies in database have limited sample sizes, or study durations studies in database are from a single location, and impacts are expected to vary in different locations
-	negative impacts	several studies documenting negative findings single, relatively rigorous study documenting a negative impact

The majority of published evaluations of ITS applications document positive impacts on the transportation system, and the assessments provided in this report reflect this fact. However, every attempt has been made to incorporate positive, negative, and neutral findings. A small number of negative findings appear in this report. For example, Section 2.6 documents increases in crashes at toll plazas with electronic toll collection, likely due to driver uncertainty regarding plaza configuration and the variations in the speeds of vehicles within the plazas. This report also documents a few evaluations that found that an ITS implementation did not have an impact on a particular measure of effectiveness, including two studies that found traveler information did not have a significant impact on throughput, while it did reduce traveler delay. Mixed results are also noted in the few instances where studies have found both positive and negative impacts in a given area. There is a continuing need for ongoing evaluation of ITS, as indicated by the large number of application areas within this report for which there are not enough evaluation data to make an assessment of the system's impact on one or more of the relevant performance measures.

Interested readers are encouraged to check the databases from time to time for the latest findings on the benefits and costs of ITS. This report is intended to be a reference report; it highlights impacts, system cost data, and an initial set of lessons learned that have been identified by other authors. The interested reader is encouraged to obtain source documents to appreciate the assumptions and constraints placed upon interpretation of the reported results. An interactive version of this report will be available through the website in the near future, including links from sections of the report to relevant portions of the ITS Benefits, Costs, and Lesson Learned Databases. The databases include more detailed summaries of the evaluations cited in this report as well as links to source documents, when available online.

The ITS JPO website is another valuable resource for information on the various applications of ITS. The website, www.its.dot.gov, also includes links to many of the resources highlighted within this report, including an Electronic Document Library (EDL), which contains electronic copies of many of the reports made available by the JPO. The new ITS Technology Overview, being developed as part of the ITS JPO website, will provide online access to information on ITS integration. The ITS Technology Overview will provide an online definition of integration, both graphically and in text, for each element in the ITS classification scheme involved with a defined integration link. The ITS Technology Overview will also provide a summary of additional information for each element of the ITS classification scheme, including benefits, costs, lessons learned, deployment, and available documentation. The ITS JPO website is being updated and the revised site, including the ITS Technology Overview, will be unveiled in May 2005, coinciding with the release of this report.

For those ITS technologies with a well-established track record, the JPO has developed a series of reports that help decision makers learn about how those ITS solutions can address local and regional transportation needs. There are several different types of reports in the series (many available at the website above), each designed to communicate with target audiences at various levels:

• ITS Benefits Brochures let experienced community leaders and transportation professionals explain in their own words how specific ITS technologies have benefited their areas.
• Cross-Cutting Studies examine various ITS approaches that can be taken to meet a community's goals.
• Case Studies provide in-depth coverage of specific approaches taken by communities across the United States.
• Implementation Guides serve as "how to" manuals to assist project staff in the technical details of implementing ITS.
• Technical Reports are easy-to-read excerpts from more detailed evaluation reports.

In addition to the variety of reports developed to assist transportation decision makers, information is available on how much and what types of ITS deployment have taken place. The ITS Metropolitan Deployment Tracking project began in 1996 with the goal of tracking the level of ITS deployment and integration in 75 of the nation's largest metropolitan areas. The number of metropolitan areas was later increased to 78. In 1997, and again in 1999, 2000, and 2002, data were collected based on a series of surveys targeted at 78 of the largest metropolitan areas. Beginning in 2002, the metropolitan target areas were expanded to include 30 medium-size, high-congestion areas, and 20 tourist areas. Additionally, in 2002, a new set of surveys was launched with the purpose of gathering data on rural/statewide ITS deployments targeted at each of the 50 states. In 2004, the metropolitan surveys of 78 large and 30 medium metropolitan areas and the statewide/rural surveys in each state were repeated. Results of the data collected for 2004 will be available at the ITS Deployment Tracking website, www.itsdeployment.its.dot.gov, in early summer 2005. This website also includes data online and in the form of reports from the earlier surveys and provides a view of deployment trends.

1.1 Benefits Database Goals and Overview

To expand the understanding of ITS benefits, the USDOT has been actively collecting information regarding the impact of ITS implementations for more than a decade. In support of this effort, the JPO sponsored the development of the ITS Benefits Database. The database is available to the public at www.benefitcost.its.dot.gov. The database contains the most recent data collected by the JPO. Its purpose is to transmit existing knowledge of ITS benefits to transportation professionals. The database also provides the research community with information on ITS areas where further analysis may be required.

The Benefits Database website contains detailed summaries of each of the ITS evaluation reports reviewed by the JPO that meet several acceptance criteria (see the "Criteria Document" under the "Available Documents" link at www.benefitcost.its.dot.gov). Summaries on the Web pages provide additional background on the context of the evaluations, the evaluation methodologies used, and links to the source documentation (when available online). While the JPO publishes summary reports such as this current document periodically, the online database is updated continuously, as reports are reviewed. Documents reviewed for inclusion in the database include the results of federal evaluation projects, as well as papers, journal articles, and state, local or international evaluation reports identified through review of conference proceedings and journals, or submitted through the database website. The collection of evaluation reports is an ongoing program, and readers are encouraged to submit relevant documents via the database website.

Table 1.1.1 provides an overview of the information available in the ITS Benefits Database, covering each goal area for each of the major ITS technology application areas. This report provides sample findings drawn from the larger body of data in the database. Table 1.1.1 demonstrates that a significant number of studies are accumulating in a number of areas, such as arterial and freeway management systems. However, there is much to be learned in many areas of ITS implementation.

Table 1.1.1 – Documents Available in the ITS Benefits Database
(as of September 30, 2004)

A Few Good Measures: Technology Application Areas	Safety	Mobility	Capacity/ Throughput	Productivity	Customer Satisfaction	Energy and Environment
Arterial Management Systems
Freeway Management Systems
Transit Management Systems
Incident Management Systems
Emergency Management Systems
Electronic Payment Systems
Traveler Information
Information Management
Crash Prevention and Safety
Roadway Operations and Maintenance
Road Weather Management
Commercial Vehicle Operations
Intermodal Freight
Collision Avoidance Systems
Driver Assistance Systems
Collision Notification Systems

1.2 Costs Database Goals and Overview

The ITS JPO also collects information on ITS costs and maintains this information in the ITS Costs Database. The database, a companion to the ITS Benefits Database, is available to the public at the same website, www.benefitcost.its.dot.gov. The database is a central site for ITS cost data and is based on the most recent data collected by the JPO. Its purpose is to make cost data available to public and private organizations. The database also provides data that the ITS JPO can use for programmatic and policy decisions and education of ITS stakeholders.

The costs database contains two types of cost information: unit costs and system costs. The difference in the two types of cost data is in the level of aggregation. Unit cost is the cost associated with an individual ITS element. System costs are associated with multiple ITS elements and typically represents the total cost of an ITS project or portion of an ITS project.

The unit costs database (presented in Appendix A) consists of a range of reported costs for a set of ITS elements. The cost data are organized by "subsystem" and generally follow the structure of the National ITS Architecture. The cost estimates are categorized as capital and operating and maintenance (O&M) costs. Capital costs are the costs expended for one-time, nonrecurring purchases. Operations and maintenance costs, often referred to as recurring costs, are the annual costs incurred on an ongoing basis. Costs are presented in a range to capture the lows and highs of the cost elements from the different data sources. A "Notes" field provides a brief narrative describing the particular unit cost element and its components. The cost data are useful in developing project cost estimates during the planning process. However, the user is encouraged to find local/regional data sources and current vendor data in order to perform a more detailed cost estimate.

The unit costs database is updated semiannually—in March and September. Beginning with the September 30, 2004 update, the dollar year of the cost data is provided for each ITS element. In addition, unit cost values are adjusted to 2003 year dollars. Information on indexes used in the adjustments is provided on the website.

The system costs portion of the database provides examples of systems that have been deployed and includes the cost of the implementation, in the form of detailed summaries. Summaries on the website provide additional background on the context of the ITS project, project cost data, and links to the source documentation (when available). Documents reviewed for inclusion in the database include the results of federal evaluation projects, as well as papers, journal articles, and state, local, or international evaluation reports identified through review of conference proceedings and journals, or through electronic submission via the website. The collection of cost sources is an ongoing effort, and readers are encouraged to submit relevant documents and cost data via the website.

The online database also provides several capabilities to simplify access to information relevant to a researcher's interest. In addition to using the classification system used in this report, interested researchers can access document summaries classified by project location, or search the database for relevant keywords. Figure 1.2.1 is a map of the United States with distribution of system cost examples available in the ITS Costs Database. Although the majority of costs information in the system costs database is from U.S. deployments, a small number of summaries capture the costs of international deployments.

The online database also provides several capabilities to simplify access to information relevant to a researcher's interest. In addition to the technology application classification system used in this report (see Section 1.4), interested researchers can access document summaries classified by project location and the ITS goal areas addressed in the evaluations, or search the database for relevant keywords. Figures 1.1.1 and 1.1.2 show the distribution of project locations for evaluation studies included in the Benefits Database. These capabilities of the online database simplify access to the most recently available data on ITS benefits identified by the JPO. The website also contains a discussion of the criteria and sources used to determine whether or not a report should be added to the Benefits Database.

A Few Good Measures

In the spring of 1996, the ITS JPO established a set of ITS program goal areas directly related to the ITS strategic plan.[33] The goal areas include improving traveler safety, improving traveler mobility, improving system efficiency, increasing the productivity of transportation providers, and conserving energy while protecting the environment. The JPO also identified several measures of effectiveness to evaluate the performance of ITS services in each goal area. The measures are known as the "Few Good Measures" and are intended to enable project managers to gauge the effects and impacts of ITS.

The USDOT has identified nine major initiatives that represent an important step in the continuing evolution of the ITS program and will contribute to strengthening the role of ITS in transportation safety, mobility, productivity, and global connectivity. Visit www.its.dot.gov for more information on these initiatives and their relationship with the safety, mobility, and productivity goals discussed below.

Safety

An explicit objective of the transportation system is to provide a safe environment for travel while continuing to strive to improve the performance of the system. Although undesirable, crashes and fatalities do occur. Several ITS services aim to minimize the risk of crash occurrence. This goal area focuses on reducing the number of crashes, and lessening the probability of a fatality should a crash occur. Typical measures of effectiveness used to quantify safety performance include the overall crash rate, fatality crash rate, and injury crash rate. Surrogate measures are also used, including vehicle speeds, speed variability, or changes in the number of violations of traffic safety laws.

Mobility

Improving mobility by reducing delay and travel time is a major goal of many ITS components. Measures of effectiveness typically used to evaluate mobility include the amount of delay time and the variability in travel time.

Delay can be measured in many different ways depending on the type of transportation system being analyzed. Delay of a system is typically measured in seconds or minutes of delay per vehicle. Also, delay for users of the system may be measured in person-hours. Delay for freight shipments could be measured in time past scheduled arrival time of the shipment. Delay can also be measured by observing the number of stops experienced by drivers before and after a project is implemented.

Travel time variability is an indicator of trip time reliability. It measures how stable or unpredictable the trip time is across numerous trips at different times of day. This measure of effectiveness can be readily applied to intermodal freight (goods) movement as well as personal travel. Reducing the variability of travel time improves the reliability of arrival time estimates that travelers or companies use to make planning and scheduling decisions. By improving operations, improving incident response, and providing information on delays, ITS services can reduce the variability of travel time in transportation networks. For example, traveler information products can be used in trip planning to help re-route commercial vehicle drivers around congested areas, resulting in less variability in travel time.

Productivity

ITS implementations can reduce operating costs and allow productivity improvements. Some applications may save time in completing business or regulatory processes, enabling businesses to increase their economic efficiency. For public agencies, ITS alternatives for transportation improvements may have lower acquisition costs and life-cycle costs when compared to traditional transportation improvements. Other ITS applications enable the collection and synthesis of data that can translate into cost savings and performance improvements. Operational efficiencies and cost savings made possible by ITS implementation can help both public and private entities make the most productive use of their resources. The measures of effectiveness for this goal area are improvements in efficiency, effectiveness, or cost savings as a result of implementing ITS.

Capacity/Throughput

Many ITS components seek to optimize the efficiency of existing facilities and use of rights-of-way so that mobility and commerce needs can be met while reducing the need to construct or expand facilities. This is accomplished by increasing the effective capacity of the transportation system. Effective capacity is the "maximum potential rate at which persons or vehicles may traverse a link, node, or network under a representative composite of roadway conditions," including "weather, incidents, and variation in traffic demand patterns."[34] Capacity, as defined by the Highway Capacity Manual, is the "maximum hourly rate at which persons or vehicles can reasonably be expected to traverse a given point or uniform section of a lane or roadway during a given time period under prevailing roadway, traffic, and control conditions."[35] The major difference between effective capacity and capacity is that capacity is generally measured under typical conditions for the facility, such as good weather and pavement conditions, with no incidents affecting the system, while effective capacity can vary depending upon these conditions and the use of management and operational strategies. Throughput is defined as the number of persons, goods, or vehicles traversing a roadway section or network per unit time. Increases in throughput are sometimes realizations of increases in effective capacity. Under certain conditions, it may reflect the maximum number of travelers that can be accommodated by a transportation system. Throughput is more easily measured than effective capacity and therefore can be used as a surrogate measure when analyzing the performance of an ITS project.

Customer Satisfaction

Given that many ITS projects and programs are specifically developed to serve the public, it is important to ensure that traveler expectations are being met or surpassed. Customer satisfaction measures characterize the difference between users' expectations and experiences in relation to a service or product. The central question in a customer satisfaction evaluation is, "Does the product deliver sufficient value (or benefits) in exchange for the customer's investment, whether the investment is measured in money or time?" Typical results reported in evaluating the impacts of customer satisfaction with a product or service include product awareness, expectations of product benefit(s), product use, response (decision making or behavior change), realization of benefits, and assessment of value. Although satisfaction is difficult to measure directly, measures related to satisfaction can be observed, including amount of travel in various modes, mode choices, and the quality of service as well as the volume of complaints and/or compliments received by the service provider.

In addition to customer satisfaction, it is necessary to evaluate the satisfaction of the transportation system provider or manager. For example, many ITS projects are implemented to enhance coordination between various stakeholders in the transportation arena. In such projects, it is important to measure the satisfaction of the transportation providers to ensure the best use of limited funding. One way to measure the performance of such a project is to survey transportation providers before and after a project has been implemented to see if coordination was improved. It may also be possible to bring together providers from each of the stakeholder groups to evaluate their satisfaction with the system before and after the implementation of the ITS project.

Energy and Environment

The air quality and energy impacts of ITS services are very important considerations, particularly for communities striving to comply with federal air quality standards. In most cases, environmental benefits can be estimated only through the use of modeling and simulation. The problems related to regional measurement include the small impact of individual projects and large numbers of exogenous variables, including weather, contributions from nonmobile sources, air pollution drifting into an area from other regions, as well as the time-evolving nature of ozone pollution. Small-scale studies generally show positive impacts of ITS on the environment. These impacts result from smoother and more efficient flows in the transportation system. However, environmental impacts of travelers reacting to large-scale deployment of ITS in the long term are not well understood.

Decreases in emission levels and energy consumption have been identified as measures of effectiveness for this goal area. Specific measures of effectiveness for emission levels and fuel use include:

• Emission levels (kilograms or tons of pollutants including carbon monoxide (CO), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), hydrocarbons (HC), and volatile organic compounds)
• Fuel use (liters or gallons)
• Fuel economy (km/L or miles/gal)

1.3 Lessons Learned Database Goals and Overview

Lessons Learned Database—Coming Soon

The ITS JPO is in the process of developing an ITS Lessons Learned Database. Major objectives are:

• Capture experiences of stakeholders in their planning, deployment, operations, maintenance, and evaluation of ITS.
• Provide all ITS stakeholders with convenient access to the lessons learned knowledge so that they can make informed decisions in their future ITS actions.

The ITS Lessons Learned Database is planned to be publicly available online in the summer of 2005, when it will be accessible as a resource from the ITS JPO website, www.its.dot.gov.

What is a Lesson Learned?

A lesson learned is the knowledge gained through experience or study. It is a reflection on what was done right, what one would do differently, and how one could be more effective in the future. An ITS stakeholder experience of what worked and what did not work in the procurement of traffic management systems software is a valid candidate for the lessons learned database. Each lesson captured in the database will be described in a concise format. A lesson description will include items such as a lesson title in the form of a recommendation, a summary of major outcomes, context description, and identifying information such as date, location, source, and contact.

The lessons summarized in this document place the reader in the position of one who has experienced either a successful or unsuccessful practice. It then places the reader in the same position of the one who has learned a lesson and deduces a statement that says, "If I had the opportunity to turn back time, this is a possible rule that might be true or helpful to others." In other words the lesson is worded as a hypothetical action that may or may not be effective if re-tried by others in the present.

The Lessons Learned Database is a relatively new venture for USDOT. Consequently, there may be few lessons available in each of the categories listed in Table 1.3.1 below. This scarcity of data makes it difficult to draw broad conclusions. The lesson contained both in the database and in this document should not be considered as official policy or guidance from USDOT. Use discretion as to whether or not lessons reported in this document apply to your situation.

Lessons Learned Knowledge Sources

Lessons will be collected primarily from documented knowledge sources. ITS case studies, best practice compendiums, planning and design reviews, and evaluation studies are targeted as key resources. The ITS Electronic Document Library, Transportation Research Board's Transportation Research Information Services (TRIS), international transportation literature database (e.g., Transport), and conference proceedings are major sources of the documents that are currently being reviewed for collection of lessons.

Lesson Types

ITS lessons will be presented in a number of different categories and topic areas depending upon the intended audience and topic of interest. Table 1.3.1 provides a list of these classifications.

Table 1.3.1 – Lessons Learned Database – Categories, Audience, and Topic Areas

Lesson Categories	Major Target Audience	Lesson Topic Areas
General ITS	Program Managers	Management and Partnerships Planning Design and Deployment Procurement Technical Integration Operations and Maintenance Legal Issues Human Resources
ITS Applications	Project Managers, Planners, Designers	Intelligent Infrastructure Intelligent Vehicle
ITS Goal Areas	Executives, Researchers, Planners	Safety Mobility Productivity Efficiency (Capacity/Throughput) Energy and Environment Customer Satisfaction
ITS Initiatives	Initiative Program Managers and Support Teams	Integrated Vehicle Based Safety Systems Cooperative Intersection Collision Avoidance Systems Next Generation 911 Mobility Services for All Americans Integrated Corridor Management Systems Nationwide Surface Transportation Weather Observing and Forecasting System – Clarus Emergency Transportation Operations Universal Electronic Freight Manifest Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII) Intelligent Vehicle Initiative (IVI) 511 Traveler Information Wireless Enhanced 911 Commercial Vehicle and Information Systems and Networks Deployment (CVISN) ITS Architecture Consistency

Lessons presented in the General ITS category will be targeted to program managers and provide insights into areas ranging from management and partnerships to human resources. For example, a reader may learn that ensuring team effort, political champion involvement, and consistent community outreach throughout the project is a critical element of any successful implementation of high-occupancy/toll lanes.

Lessons presented in the ITS applications category will be targeted to the project managers, planners, and designers responsible for a particular ITS application. These ITS applications lessons will be categorized according to the 16 technology application areas utilized in the benefits and costs databases. This will allow, for example, a designer planning a new transit management system to search for lessons gathered from the experiences of others deploying similar applications. Other application areas include freeway management systems, arterial management systems, electronic payment systems, traveler information, collision warning systems, and driver assistance systems.

Lessons presented in the ITS goals area category will be targeted to executives, researchers, and planners interested in learning more about successful approaches to maximizing benefits in key ITS goal areas ranging from safety to customer satisfaction.

Where appropriate, lessons will also be categorized according to the USDOT's ITS Initiatives. This categorization will aid program managers and others supporting the initiatives to quickly identify lessons that pertain to their particular initiative. It is expected that any given individual lesson may be appropriate to one or more different categories, audiences, and topic areas.

Figure 1.3.1 shows a schematic illustration of database access flow and the types of lesson information that are being collected for lessons within each topic area.

General Lessons

Management and Partnerships

Management and partnerships lessons will capture: outreach and awareness efforts that made stakeholders knowledgeable and accepting of ITS; partnerships that facilitated collaboration and cooperation among multiple agencies in deploying ITS; approaches used to manage ITS programs, projects, and operations; and, policy decisions that impacted ITS. Examples of target groups for the awareness and outreach efforts are general public, elected and appointed officials, and technical staff. Key partnerships of interest include public-private partnerships, and public-public partnerships.

Planning

Planning lessons will capture the approaches used to incorporate the consideration of ITS products and services in the transportation planning process. These approaches may include the development of a regional ITS architecture, an ITS strategic plan, a concept of operations, a traffic analysis tool, or a transportation improvement plan (TIP—metropolitan, statewide).

Design and Deployment

Design and deployment lessons will capture the approaches used in the design and completion of an ITS project, including the choice of appropriate ITS technologies, use of ITS standards and systems engineering, ITS software development issues, and the construction and implementation techniques on-site.

Procurement

Procurement lessons will capture the approaches that facilitate the purchase of goods and services needed for an ITS project. They may include such items as procurement of ITS hardware and software and contracting methods.

Technical Integration

Technical integration will capture approaches that facilitated the technical connection of systems operated by different entities and the sharing of information from these systems. Such integration may occur among multiple systems, agencies, and regions.

Operations and Maintenance

Operations and maintenance (O&M) will capture approaches that keep the ITS products and services functioning after a project has been implemented. O&M issues may include allocation of funds for O&M, outsourcing of specialized O&M services, and electronic and manual inspections that ensure ITS devices remain in operating condition. The operational strategies used to achieve high performance will also be covered.

Legal Issues

Lessons about handling legal issues will capture the approaches that facilitated resolution of potential disputes in areas such as liability, intellectual property rights, and privacy. Liability issues may include approaches that ensured that the legal responsibility for an act or failure to act within a project is properly assigned. Intellectual property rights lessons may capture approaches that equitably distributed the patents, copyrights, trademarks, and other documentation developed within a project among project participants. Privacy lessons may include technical approaches that were used that ensured the privacy of stakeholders is not violated and institutional approaches used that convinced stakeholders that ITS products and services do not infringe upon the privacy of an individual.

Human Resources

Human resources lessons will capture the approaches that ensured the right number of staff was assigned to plan, design, deploy, operate, and maintain an ITS project and that they had the right skills and training.

ITS Application Areas - Infrastructure and Vehicle

The ITS application areas are grouped in two categories—intelligent infrastructure and intelligent vehicle—which also form the structure for discussing the benefits and costs of ITS in this report, as discussed in Section 1.4. Most general lessons are likely to have been experienced through the planning and deployment efforts in one or more of the application areas. In the intelligent infrastructure category, lessons will be gathered in such areas as arterial management, freeway management, incident management, and transit management. In the intelligent vehicle category, lessons collected will fall under collision avoidance systems, driver assistance systems, and collision notification systems.

ITS Program Goal Areas

Lessons will be categorized to reflect the progress being made in advancing the national ITS program goal areas such as improving safety, mobility, and productivity as well as capacity/throughput, customer satisfaction, energy, and environment. These goal areas were previously described in Section 1.1.

USDOT ITS Initiatives

The Lessons Learned Database will identify the potential linkage of a lesson with the USDOT's major ITS initiatives (see Table 1.3.1). The ITS initiatives represent an important step in the continuing evolution of the ITS program and will contribute to strengthening the role of ITS in transportation safety, mobility, productivity, and global connectivity. Additional information on these initiatives can be found on the ITS JPO website (www.its.dot.gov). The purpose of capturing ITS lessons associated with these initiatives is to leverage from the ITS stakeholders' experience in these areas. Lessons learned by the stakeholders could help guide the planning and programming efforts for these initiatives.

Lesson Samples

Spread throughout the remainder of this report is a sampling of the first few lessons gathered. Presented in short summaries, this sampling represents stakeholders' experience in such general areas as: management and partnerships; planning; design and deployment; technical integration; operations and maintenance; legal issues; human resources; and in technology application areas such as arterial management and freeway management.

In compiling the database, researchers have observed many lessons that appear over and over again in multiple reference sources. To some, these lessons will appear obvious. Nevertheless, these lessons need to be told to a new generation of ITS professionals. As Peter F. Drucker once observed, "…(t)he obvious is precisely what needs to be pointed out—otherwise, it will be overlooked."[31] As noted previously, the Lessons Learned Database is in the process of development, and this report presents only a sampling of ITS lessons in a summary format as an introductory overview. These lessons can be found at the beginning of Section 2 and in the sidebars embedded within the benefits/costs discussions in the subsequent sections. More details of these, as well as new lessons, will be presented in a Lessons Learned Database website planned to be made available to the public in the summer of 2005.

1.4 Report Organization

In reporting the benefits, costs, and lessons learned in the deployment of ITS, this report follows a classification scheme for categorizing ITS applications. The ITS classification scheme used in this report groups ITS applications into two major components: intelligent infrastructure and intelligent vehicles. These components are then divided into technology application areas. Figures 1.4.1 through 1.4.3 present an overview of this classification scheme. Subsequent sections of this report provide additional detail within each of the major technology application areas.

The classification scheme cannot represent all aspects of ITS. For example, many of the technology application areas can be dependent on or heavily influenced by other areas. This dependency is not well shown in the classification scheme. Also note that many ITS technology application areas share information and operate in a cooperative manner that is difficult to capture in this format. For example, traveler information systems, especially those regional or multimodal in nature, must rely on surveillance data collected by other ITS applications such as freeway, arterial, and transit management systems. In addition, in-vehicle driver assistance systems, such as navigation, can be augmented by a cooperative infrastructure to provide routing and/or travel time information to vehicle systems. Within this report, in cases of integrated deployment of more than one application, system cost and impact data appear under the technology application area that the implementation most directly supports.

Sections 2 and 3 begin with a brief description of the ITS classification scheme components, intelligent infrastructure and intelligent vehicles, respectively. Subsequent subsections within these two sections include a brief description of each technology application area and specific ITS application area. The benefits and costs data are presented in tabular format based on the classification scheme structure for each technology application area. Example lessons learned are provided for many of the technology application areas (described in brief sidebars), throughout Section 2. The example lessons presented in this section have broad applicability across the various areas of ITS deployment. More comprehensive details of these and additional lessons will be presented in the forthcoming Lessons Learned Database, planned to be available in the summer of 2005. Within the benefit and cost tables, impact information is presented by goal area (e.g., safety, mobility, etc.), followed by a listing of relevant unit cost elements (refer to Appendix A), and concluding with available examples of system cost data.

Figure 1.4.4 is an excerpt of Table 2.1.1 discussing the benefits and costs of arterial management systems; this portion presents the benefits and costs of ITS applications for bicyclists and pedestrians. Several pieces of information are provided in the benefits portion of the data table in each section of this report. The "Goal Area," one of the "Few Good Measures" discussed earlier in Section 1.1, is followed by the "Number of Studies" in the database identifying impacts within that goal area for a given application of ITS. The "Impact" rating in the third column represents an assessment of the application's impact on the performance goal area, considering the collection of reports in the database (a more complete discussion of these ratings is provided in Table 1.0.1). Impact ratings fall into one of the six categories defined in the Impact Legend below, which is also repeated in each subsection within Sections 2 and 3 of this report. Example impacts for each application are included in the final column of the table, drawn from representative studies within the database.

Unit Costs Database

The costs portion of the data tables in each section include a listing of relevant unit cost subsystems for the application. The icon to the left identifies applicable unit cost subsystems in the Costs Database for the given application area, which can be used to refer to unit cost information in Appendix A. The Costs Database is regularly updated, with the most recent data available at www.benefitcost.its.dot.gov.

System Cost

Sample system cost information, along with a brief description of the implemented system, follows the unit cost information in each data table and is identified by the icon to the left. The purpose of presenting system cost information is to give the reader an example of systems that have been deployed along with the costs of each particular implementation. The reader is reminded that the costs presented are taken from the source documents. Project costs are not reported in a standard format; rather cost data reflect the specific ITS project and vary in detail and content from project to project. Reported costs include: the total cost of the deployment, ITS equipment or component costs, and, less frequently, operations and maintenance (O&M) costs. The parenthetical date following the system cost information represents the dollar year of the cost data, when known. New information on system costs is also added to the online costs database regularly.

Concluding remarks are presented in Section 4. A list of references and endnotes follows Section 4. Appendix A contains the unit cost data from the Costs Database in table format, as of September 30, 2004. Appendix B contains a summary of the data presented in this report. This summary tallies the references documenting ITS benefits and costs available in the online database. Appendix C contains a listing of acronyms and abbreviations used throughout the report.

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