The US Department of Transportation (USDOT) has published its annual report highlighting the country’s progress in advancing intelligent transportation systems (ITS), including analysis of the benefits of the technologies based on recent deployments.
The publication, ITS Benefits, Costs, and Lessons Learned – 2018 Update Report, presents information on the benefits, costs and lessons learned regarding ITS planning, deployment, and operations, obtained from the most recent evaluation data.
The report notes that ITS provide a proven set of strategies for advancing transportation safety, mobility and environmental sustainability by integrating communication and information technology applications into the management and operation of the transportation system across all modes.
The annual report provides a collection of fact sheets presenting information on the performance of recently deployed ITS, and the 2018 update includes 10 new or revised fact sheets relative to the 2017 edition.
The report is based on the ITS Benefits, Costs, and Lessons Learned datasets, known collectively as the ‘Knowledge Resource Databases’. These databases were developed by the USDOT ITS Joint Program Office’s Evaluation Program to support informed decision making regarding ITS investments by tracking the effectiveness of deployed systems.
The Knowledge Resource Databases contain over 20 years of summaries of the benefits, costs and lessons learned of specific ITS implementations, drawn from trusted sources, such as evaluation studies, research syntheses, handbooks, journal articles and conference papers.
An important recent addition to the Knowledge Resource Databases is the inclusion of benefit, cost and lessons learned summaries for the USDOT’s Connected Vehicle program, with the new entries available via a dedicated button on the agency’s Knowledge Resource Databases homepage.
Over the last year, the most recent additions to the ITS Knowledge Resource Databases indicate the following evaluation highlights:
• The new wave of crash-prevention and safety strategies includes the integration of vehicle and infrastructure safety systems and implementation of connected vehicle technologies for safety applications;
• Crash statistics show that lane departure warning systems have reduced all relevant crashes by 11%, and all relevant injury crashes by 21%, controlling for driver demographics;
• In a pilot test, bus drivers using in-vehicle collision avoidance warning systems were involved in 72% fewer near-miss events than a control group where the warning feature was turned off;
• In one study, 23% of pedestrians reported that a crosswalk transit vehicle turn warning system helped them avoid a collision with a bus;
• Truck platooning works by creating a close, constant coupling between a convoy of connected vehicles, providing fuel benefits for both the lead and following trucks. In a USDOT-sponsored field test, the net fuel savings for a three-truck platoon was measured to be between 5.2% and 7.8%.
View the complete USDOT 2018 ITS Update Report and accompanying fact sheets here.
