Using ITSOpportunities and Issues

Jeffrey SpencerITS Team Leader

Federal Transit AdministrationU.S. Department of Transportation

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Transportation Facts

• If all Americans who take transit to work drove instead, their cars would circle the earth in a line of traffic 23,000 miles long.

• There are more than 160,000 traffic signals in the U.S.

• The cost of sitting in traffic congestion costs travelers and businesses $40 billion each year.

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)

Program

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What are Intelligent Transportation Systems

(ITS) ?Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) can be defined as the application of advanced information and communications technology to surface transportation in order to achieve enhanced safety and mobility while reducing the environmental impact of transportation.

In order to fully incorporate ITS into the surface transportation network, ITS must be “mainstreamed” into the overall transportation planning and project development processes that exist in each state and metropolitan region of the country.

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Why is ITS Important?

• Offers the next major leap forward in improving safety, convenience, and productivity of our personal and commercial travel.

• Critical as population and congestion increase, and land and funding for new roads decrease.

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Issues• After a review of state, regional, and transit ITS

architectures in the United States that could be identified and located and surveying a number of transit representatives from “technologically-savvy” transit agencies, it can be said that most transit agencies are included within their appropriate Regional or Statewide ITS Architecture. However, many of these same agency representatives admit that their agencies do not typically reference the ITS Architectures when planning, designing, or deploying transit technologies.

• Federal and non-Federal interviewees indicated that one reason the ITS Architectures are not referenced more is that FTA grant managers seldom advocate for or verify the existence of this ITS project requirement. One possible reason offered was that the FTA Regional Offices have a difficult time recalling which ITS Architecture corresponds to the grantee.

Source: FTA Transit Intelligent Transportation System Architecture Consistency Review – 2010 Update

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What’s the role of Planners?

• Recognize an ITS project• Ensure compliance with FTA Policy• Review consistency with Regional

Architecture and RTIP

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Oversight Teamwork

• Architecture• RTIP/STIP• User needs

Planner

• Systems• Specifications• SEMP/PMP

Engineer

• Standards• Requirements• Contract

Procurement

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Applicable Laws/Regulations

• The Transportation Acts Transportation Equity Act for the 21ST Century (TEA-21), Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) and Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21) all required that ITS projects using federal funds must conform to the National ITS Architecture and Standards, and use a systems engineering process.

• The Highway Trust Fund (HTF) is the source of funding for most of the programs in the Transportation Act. The HTF is composed of the Highway Account, which funds highway and intermodal programs, and the Mass Transit Account.

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FHWA Final Rule/FTA Policy(Part 940)

• An ITS project, as spelled out in the FHWA Final Rule and FTA Policy, is any project in whole or in part that funds the acquisition of technologies or systems of technologies, that provide or significantly contribute to the provision of one or more ITS user services as defined in the National ITS Architecture.

• 23CFR, Part 940 requires that ITS projects: Conform to the Regional/National ITS Architecture Use a system engineering process, and Use applicable standards.

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Systems Architecture

• What is a “System?”

• What is an “Architecture?”

• What is a “Standard?”

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What is an ITS Architecture?

An ITS Architecture is a specific, tailored framework for ensuring institutional agreement and technical integration for the implementation of ITS projects or groups of projects in a particular geographic area, a designated region, a mode, or an agency. An ITS Architecture functionally defines:

1. The functions required for ITS technologies to perform,

2. The physical entities or subsystems where these functions reside, and

3. The information flows and data flows that integrate these subsystems.

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Regional Architecture

A document that contains*…

7. Interfaces/flows8. Agreements9. Standards identification10.Project sequencing11. Implementation plan12.Maintenance plan

1. Architecture scope2. Stakeholder identification3. System inventory4. Needs and services5. Operational concept6. Functional requirements

*it’s not necessarily glamorous!

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Regional ITS Architecture

• A regional ITS architecture can be used as a tool to support metropolitan and statewide transportation planning.

• A regional architecture provides a means by which peer agencies can jointly define their vision for ITS development based on regional goals and objectives.

• Using the regional ITS architecture, a region can plan for technology application and integration to support more effective planning for operations.

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Architectures by State

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RTIP or ITS Plan?

• Even though most regions have a regional ITS architecture, their jobs are not done. The regional ITS architecture is a living document and needs to be maintained and updated as new systems and functionality are added, or as functionality is removed. Institutional participation in regional ITS architectures have not guaranteed architectural understanding or regulatory compliance.

• The development of the regional ITS architecture is not meant to compete with the formal transportation planning process for transportation improvement plans (i.e., RTIP, STIP). They must work together to provide the best "plan" for the region. Title 23 requires the TIPs to be updated every four years. Some ITS plans are older than ten years.

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Systems Engineering

• As an inter-disciplinary approach to procurement and implementation, systems engineering (SE) enables you to identify and document all of the project requirements, to effectively manage the technical complexity of the resulting developments, and to verify that the requirements are thoroughly and correctly implemented.

• USDOT developed a step-by-step procedure for using SE to implement projects without having to know SE.

(See: http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/fhwahop11027/index.htm)

Systems Engineering for ITS Deployment

System Requirements

DesignUser

Needs

Operation EvaluationImplementation

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Standards• ITS standards should be used on all transportation

projects that involve ITS technologies. ITS standards bring about interoperability by specifying consistency and compatibility of the interconnects and interfaces, both hardware and software, between ITS systems and components.

• Each of the information flows in the ITS Architecture has the appropriate ITS standards identified, so the stakeholders can select which ITS standards should be pursued as individual projects are developed.

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Applicable Standards

• National Transportation Communications for ITS Protocol (NTCIP)

– The NTCIP is a joint standardization project of AASHTO, ITE, and NEMA

– NTCIP 9001 v04 is an educational tool, created to assist planners, specification writers, and implementers in understanding the various NTCIP standard publications and how to use them.

• Transit Communications Interface Profiles (TCIP)

– APTA TCIP is based on the earlier TCIP work performed by ITE, AASHTO, and NEMA and published as the NTCIP 1400-series standards.

– APTA TCIP extended the NTCIP Standards to include a Concept of Operations, Model Architecture, Dialog Definitions, and a rigorous, modular approach to conformance.

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TCIPTCIP provides building blocks for interfaces for several business areas:

• Common Public Transport • Scheduling • Passenger Information • Transit Signal Priority • Control Center • Onboard Systems • Spatial Referencing • Fare Collection

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How to do it?

• Current FTA grants manager guidance under Technical Review is to:

Part 2: ITS elements• Ensure non-add scope is included in grant.• Ensure grantee verifies that a Regional Architecture is in place and

project is consistent with Regional Architecture.

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What Could Be Better?

Ask questions!• Is the grantee or a subrecipient attempting to

deploy ITS technologies? If yes, are ITS projects and programs part of an approved Regional ITS Architecture? What is the title and date of the Architecture document?

• If the project includes ITS components that implement any of the defined User Services, it is considered an “ITS project.”

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Ask!

• Has the grantee or subrecipient established a process for the systems engineering analysis of ITS projects that addresses the seven prescribed steps? Has it applied the process? If the project scope has changed, has it reviewed the systems engineering analysis and, if necessary, updated it?

• FTA’s ITS Architecture Policy prescribes seven steps for the systems engineering analysis. SE documents all of the project requirements to effectively manage the technical complexity of the project.

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Ask!

• Has the grantee or subrecipient identified and integrated the required standards for the project?

• Procurement documents should specify the standards, the performance requirements, and functional requirement of ITS projects. These should include the interface agreements and information exchanges between ITS projects and other planned and existing systems and subsystems.