BE Magazine - Volume 4, Issue 3 - (Page 6)

More Al Karr Transportation Management & Engineering Magazine ITS Sightings Far removed from an unidentiﬁed object, intelligent transportation systems are starting to take off reached 200 million, of which 107 million were licensed drivers. Fast forward to 2006. The U.S. population has passed 300 million, with 199 million licensed drivers. In those intervening years, the number of vehicle-miles driven nearly tripled. By 2043, according to estimates by the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, vehicle-miles traveled will leap by 135 percent, but highway capacity will grow just 9 percent, with the average motorist spending 160 hours a year—four eight-hour-day work weeks—sitting in trafﬁc tie-ups. Facing trafﬁc conditions like that, the raison d’etre for ITS—to make surface transportation more efﬁcient, safer, and more economical through the use of electronic, computer, and communications technologies—will be severely tested in coming years. The ITS industry has become a muscular teenager, measured by the age of ITS America anyway. The industry has developed a wide range of technology providers, including everything from cell phones, PDAs, vehicle navigation systems, and electronic toll-collection systems to highway trafﬁc monitoring and reporting networks. Neil Schuster, who has been ITS America president since October 2001, cites “the proliferation of ITS products and services,” noting that “there are more ITS solutions to trafﬁc problems today than ever before.” I n 1968, the Apollo 7 and Apollo 8 space ﬂights, each with three astronauts aboard, successfully orbited the moon and splashed down safely in the Paciﬁc. Some of the scientists and engineers at NASA who worked on the Apollo missions—James Costantino, ﬁrst president of ITS America, for one—would later adapt air and space technology to surface transportation, laying the foundations for what became known as intelligent transportation systems (ITSs). That also was the year the U.S. population 6 BE MAGAZINE | Volume 4, Issue 3

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of BE Magazine - Volume 4, Issue 3

Contents Rising to the Challenge News BE Newsletter Highlights More ITS Sightings Racing Concrete Canoes Lights, Camera, Action! Making the Cut People’s Choice Awards 2007 Executive Keynotes Building Clear Vision of a Dream Concrete Results Reaching New Heights Building News From Bentley Golden KIWI Awards 2007 Civil A Coordination of National Highway Proportions Training Troops Beautifying Highways, One Sign at a Time Civil News From Bentley Geospatial Facility Facelift Planning for Uncertainty Geospatial News From Bentley MicroStation at the Heart of LiDAR Surveying Solutions Plant Making the Grade Data Deja Vu Data Clouds Provide Clear Visual of Underground Saving Precious-Metal Mining Time Plant News From Bentley Advertisers Index Special/Academic The Art of Visualization Training Is Key To Delivering State-of-the-Art Solutions Bridging the Information/Infrastructure Gap

BE Magazine - Volume 4, Issue 3

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.