Innovating road traffic management by ITS: a future perspective

The application of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is expected to improve the performance of road transportation significantly. Public policy makers, among others, are therefore increasingly interested in the implementation possibilities of these systems. However, current knowledge of these ITS implementation issues is poor with respect to e.g., technological requirements for ITS implementation, the contribution of ITS to general transport policy goals and the willingness of stakeholders to accept ITS. In general, public policy making suffers from a lack of vision on integrated ITS implementation. This paper presents a view on an integrated ITS strategy for road traffic management. This view is based on a conceptual framework for the transport system in which transport processes are linked to stakeholders' behaviour. Within this view, basic traffic management objectives are used to define consistent packages of ITS applications.