Lag In Intelligent Transportation Could Hurt Economy
- By Keith Barry
- February 18, 2010 |
- 9:30 am |
- Categories: Infrastructure
The United States lags years behind countries like Japan, Singapore and South Korea in implementing sophisticated intelligent transportation systems that make moving goods and people more efficient, and it could hurt the economy, according to a new report.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation that examined what world leaders in transportation are doing and found the United States is far behind in developing vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure communication and telemetry systems. The report found Japan leads the world in adopting such technology, often called Intelligent Transportation Systems or ITS.
The technology can range from synchronizing traffic lights for optimal traffic flow to providing real-time information on traffic conditions and accidents to minimize traffic congestion. In Singapore, for example, all traffic lights are programmed for optimal traffic flow but just 40 percent of traffic lights in the United States are. Japan’s Smartway project goes further, offering drivers real-time traffic information, accident repots and navigation that avoids congested roadways.
“It can tell you that you’re about to come up on a blind curve, that traffic is backed up ahead of you, and that you need to brake immediately,” report author Stephen Ezell said, describing just one of the features Smartway offers.
Unlike similar premium services in the U.S. that are mainly a luxury for drivers of high-end vehicles, Smartway will be widely available both in new cars and as an aftermarket device. In addition to keeping drivers from wasting time stuck in traffic, Ezell said, ITS is actually a major gain for nationwide productivity.
Not only will systems like Smartway reduce the amount of fuel that drivers burn while in traffic jams and bring down motor vehicle fatality rates, ITS is also a boon for those Asian manufacturers who rely on just-in-time inventory strategies.
“If you talk to FedEx or UPS, they’d make it very clear that the level of congestion they face [in the U.S.] is an impediment to the JIT business models U.S. manufacturers would like to deploy,” Ezell said.
Factoring in all cost savings, Ezell said, “ITS systems on average have a benefit to cost ratio of nine to one – far above putting in additional highway capacity, which has a ratio of 2.7 to one.”
Individual measures can be even more beneficial, with the GAO estimating that a system like Japan’s Smartway could offer savings of 25:1.
“If we were all able to have real time traffic information, to deploy such a system would cost $1.2 billion, but it would deliver a $30.2 billion economic return over a ten year period in terms of mobility, safety and environmental savings,” Ezell said.
So what’s the holdup? There are two.
The foundation says we aren’t spending enough. The U.S. spends $100 million is spent annually. This is a fraction of the $2.8 billion China spent last year alone. What’s more, most of the money has been spent solely on research, not implementation.
Unlike Japan, Sinagpore and South Korea — relatively small, densely-populated countries with fully-developed road networks — the U.S. has a large road network that is for the most part congested only in and around major cities. Most importantly, roadways in the U.S. are under both federal and state control, whereas the leaders in ITS have “developed national policies that recognize the importance of information technology in general and ITS in particular.”
To match programs in Asia, Ezell says that the federal government has to treat ITS “like a 21st century digital equivalent of the Interstate Highway System,” with strong federal leadership and a lot of political will. He estimates it might take $2.5 billion per year to implement ITS, but “it’s much easier for politicians to attend a groundbreaking for a new highway than to explain they put in a back-office computer system.”
All these factors make research, development and implementation take a lot longer. The U.S. Department of Transportation is currently taking five years to research an ITS proposal called IntelliDrive. By comparison, Japan’s Smartway took six years from conceptualization to implementation.
“They did in six years what it’s taking us five years to see if we can or can’t do,” Ezell said.
Photo of rush hour in Kobe, Japan: Flickr / sachman75
Read More http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/02/us-lags-asia-in-its/#ixzz0g6HwCIaK
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