Renewed Interest in ITS Being Driven by Environmental and Safety Concerns

The main focus of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) has traditionally been on road-infrastructure-based traffic flow management aimed at increasing the travel efficiency of personal, public transport and commercial vehicles thus supporting economic productivity. But the decreasing traffic congestion levels produced by the current economic recession have shifted attention to environmental benefits and transport safety.

“ITS’s new environmental trend was reflected in the programme of the ITS World Congress recently held in Stockholm,” says ABI Research practice director Dominique Bonte. “While ITS Stockholm 2009 aimed at covering all aspects of ITS, there was a clear increase in the number of sessions related to green technology, such as energy efficiency, clean mobility, emission and fuel consumption reduction, climate change/global warming mitigation, air quality improvement, eco-driving and carbon footprint reduction, electrical and hybrid vehicle deployment, sustainable urban transportation systems, green freight, and green flying”.

However, ITS safety and security initiatives remain high on the political agenda of governments across the world. On August 21st the EU made a last call to all member states for the voluntary implementation by public authorities, car manufacturers and carriers of the eCall automatic emergency call system in all new vehicles across Europe by 2014. eCall is expected to save up to 2500 lives every year as well as reduce the severity of injuries.

At the same time, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding, has warned that regulatory measures could be imposed if insufficient progress is made by the end of 2009. In Brazil legislation making theft detection and tracking telematics systems compulsory in new cars from 2010 has already been approved.

“Regulation and government-led standardization efforts are expected to provide a boost to the ITS and telematics industries,” Bonte continues, “by enabling new applications such as electronic toll and road user charging systems, probe-based traffic monitoring and prediction solutions, and travel information services.”