Jon Masters ITS International Editor
This issue of ITS International contains a feature article based on interviews with leading figures of the ITS associations of the United States, Europe, Japan and Malaysia. A key point made is the importance of political leadership or policy direction in driving take up and implementation of ITS technology.
This industry actually need not complain of a lack of drive on the part of politicians, or so it seems from other projects reported in this issue. True, the US would welcome a new transport bill and the promise of assistance for long term planning that reauthorisation would bring. ITS professionals in Malaysia also are hopeful of a political champion to drive their cause; to take systems such as electronic tolling onwards to next stages of development.
What Malaysia does have is a relatively new SPAD public transport commission championing and driving policies aimed at ambitious targets for modal shift. ITS technologies – smart ticketing, rapid transit signalling and information services – will be key to reaching the objectives. It is not SPAD’s responsibility to ensure the potential of ITS is exploited to the full. The ITS industry has that role to play, but it seems in Malaysia at least, ITS protagonists would be preaching to the converted. SPAD appears to have technology sewn up in its plans.
Political drive is not in short supply where there is sufficient need or reason for greater use of ITS systems. In Japan, for instance, shortcomings in emergency response following the country’s devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011 have shown there is a real need for a different approach to coordinating transport logistics of relief efforts. The resulting initiative, making greater use of private sector vehicle data to ascertain and communicate safe supply routes, is being led by ITS Japan. But this is a national association backed closely by government agencies, in a country not short of political drive where technology and transport meet.
In Thailand and Mexico – in the State of Jalisco at least – it is ‘carnage’ on road networks that has driven political willpower and brought action in the form of ITS solutions. An innovative system of electronic vehicle registration (EVR) has taken shape in and around Bangkok making use of RFID tags, tamper evidence technology, tag readers and ALPR camera technology. Principal aims – and policy drivers – are enforcement of speed limits for the sake of road safety.
Results from Thailand’s EVR are looking promising so far, as they are in Jalisco, where state authorities are driving a programme using radar equipment for speed monitoring and enforcement.
The Jalisco authorities put their success down to a ‘multi-sectoral’ approach but the scheme clearly would not have been started at all without Jalisco’s political initiative. Nor would it have had such a marked effect without the state’s efforts communicating key messages to the motoring public of Guadalajara.
These are examples where the needs for ITS solutions are clear and routes to technological answers relatively easy to map out. Other ITS challenges are more complex. The Netherlands’4767 Rijkswaterstaat and 1841 UK Highways Agency have embarked on an initiative so apparently ambitious that their first move has been to ask industry if what they hope to achieve is possible; telematics specialists can only wait to see if usage based car insurance will take off in real terms this time around, with or without political backing. Where there is a real need, opportunity for ITS solutions will follow. Jon Masters
This industry actually need not complain of a lack of drive on the part of politicians, or so it seems from other projects reported in this issue. True, the US would welcome a new transport bill and the promise of assistance for long term planning that reauthorisation would bring. ITS professionals in Malaysia also are hopeful of a political champion to drive their cause; to take systems such as electronic tolling onwards to next stages of development.
What Malaysia does have is a relatively new SPAD public transport commission championing and driving policies aimed at ambitious targets for modal shift. ITS technologies – smart ticketing, rapid transit signalling and information services – will be key to reaching the objectives. It is not SPAD’s responsibility to ensure the potential of ITS is exploited to the full. The ITS industry has that role to play, but it seems in Malaysia at least, ITS protagonists would be preaching to the converted. SPAD appears to have technology sewn up in its plans.
Political drive is not in short supply where there is sufficient need or reason for greater use of ITS systems. In Japan, for instance, shortcomings in emergency response following the country’s devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011 have shown there is a real need for a different approach to coordinating transport logistics of relief efforts. The resulting initiative, making greater use of private sector vehicle data to ascertain and communicate safe supply routes, is being led by ITS Japan. But this is a national association backed closely by government agencies, in a country not short of political drive where technology and transport meet.
In Thailand and Mexico – in the State of Jalisco at least – it is ‘carnage’ on road networks that has driven political willpower and brought action in the form of ITS solutions. An innovative system of electronic vehicle registration (EVR) has taken shape in and around Bangkok making use of RFID tags, tamper evidence technology, tag readers and ALPR camera technology. Principal aims – and policy drivers – are enforcement of speed limits for the sake of road safety.
Results from Thailand’s EVR are looking promising so far, as they are in Jalisco, where state authorities are driving a programme using radar equipment for speed monitoring and enforcement.
The Jalisco authorities put their success down to a ‘multi-sectoral’ approach but the scheme clearly would not have been started at all without Jalisco’s political initiative. Nor would it have had such a marked effect without the state’s efforts communicating key messages to the motoring public of Guadalajara.
These are examples where the needs for ITS solutions are clear and routes to technological answers relatively easy to map out. Other ITS challenges are more complex. The Netherlands’
