BE Magazine - Volume 4, Issue 3 - (Page 7)

For the future, Schuster said, “On the shortterm horizon, we want to take all the technologies—like iPods, cell phones, and trafﬁc management centers—and integrate them. That’s the key to the future of ITS.” And it is all in the context of meeting future transportation needs less with budget-straining, space-eating new lanes of concrete and asphalt, and more with electronic methods of monitoring and controlling trafﬁc. Two million vehicles will be equipped with General Motors Corp.’s OnStar this model year, compared with 1.2 million in 2005, a 41 percent increase. Each month in the United States and Canada, OnStar assists in about 11,400 emergencies, unlocks 50,000 doors, and locates 450 stolen vehicles. Where’s the growth chart? One problem that deters the entry of more companies into ITS is that there is no reliable gauge of the size, ﬁnancial health, and market potential of the industry. It is a mixture of large companies devoting a small part of their business to ITS, some older ITS companies doing well ﬁnancially, and newer ones with mixed ﬁnancial success themselves. There are reportedly some efforts to encourage Mary Peters, the new Secretary of Transportation, who has some experience in the ITS ﬁeld, to throw more weight in favor of ITS and to get the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to work with the private sector in coming up with an ITS market analysis. Meaningful market statistics are necessary, as a House staffer who works with the 50-member ITS Caucus in the House, said: “You need to prove that what you’re peddling is actually working.” Raul Catangui, a former ITS America legislative director, cited lack of industrywide market data as one reason why ITS “has not matured to where it ought to be. Until you ﬁnd out the numbers, you don’t have a level of maturity.” Catangui is now president and CEO of Synergy Alliances, an ITS consulting ﬁrm, and vice president of Crossroads Traveler Information Systems of Valley Springs, California. One other sign of immaturity, said Bob Andosca, Crossroads CEO, is a lack of government standards, which are common to more established industries. “I’d like to say that we’ve taken off like a rocket with ITS, but it’s slow,” he said. “We’ve got money, but we don’t know how to use it. It may take years to get [standards] through to the DOT.” Meanwhile, to get a handle on how ITS is doing as a money maker, ITS America has launched a series of reports called “ITS Market Data & Forecast: Infrastructure ITS.” Only the ﬁrst one has come out, which covers infrastructure by state. “It shows healthy growth rates,” Schuster said, “as little as 10 percent and as high as 30 percent, using compound growth rates.” Public acceptance of intelligent transportation is growing, with all deliberate speed, enhanced by a rapid growth in 5-1-1-based and other trafﬁc-trouble reporting systems and motorist aids like the OnStar system. But public acceptance still has a long way to go. The public recognizes ITS approaches as “just a tool” for making travel safer, easier, and faster, said Phil Tarnoff, director of the Center for Advanced Transportation Technology at the University of Maryland. “People don’t talk as much about what ITS Volume 4, Issue 3 | BE MAGAZINE 7

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

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