Highway Congestion: Intelligent Transportation Systems' Promise for Managing Congestion Falls Short, and DOT Could Better Facilitate Their Strategic Use

According to DOT officials, the Joint Program Office is continuing efforts to make state and local government agencies fully aware of the eligibility of ITS operational improvements for Federal funding. Specifically, DOT officials plan to brief various stakeholder groups on the specific provisions of SAFETEA-LU dealing with operations, congestion, and ITS and plan to make sure that this issue is clearly addressed in briefing materials. DOT is also working with various organizations such as ITS America and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) to ensure this issue is clearly addressed. DOT officials added that this is a continuing effort.

The Department of Transportation (DOT) acknowledged that cost effectiveness is one of a number of criterion that states and localities should consider when making transportation system improvement decisions, including intelligent transportation system (ITS) deployments, and has taken steps to highlight cost effectiveness analyses. For example, DOT has compiled ITS deployment studies that include cost to benefit calculations in its benefits database. In addition, the ITS Joint Program Office (ITS JPO) promote ITS-related evaluation tools, such as the ITS Deployment Analysis System (IDAS), in its 2007 ITS resource guide. IDAS is a software program for state and local planners to evaluate the costs and benefits associated with ITS investments. Finally, according to a JPO official we contacted, ITS JPO contributed to a rulemaking by the Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration on statewide and metropolitan area transportation planning to produce a final rule that requires state transportation improvement plans to (1) more explicitly consider ITS and ITS data in developing congestion management processes and (2) include financial information containing system-level estimates of costs and revenue sources.