Author Description

Rapid advances in information processing and communications technology have created new opportunities for transportation professionals to deliver safer and more efficient transportation services, and to respond proactively to increasing demand for transportation services in many areas and mounting customer expectations from coast to coast. However, many of these new opportunities are predicated upon effective coordination between organizations - at both an institutional and technical level. To encourage and enable this coordination, the USDOT has developed the National ITS Architecture and related tools to help identify and exploit these opportunities for cost-effective cooperation. This document is one such tool -- it describes how to develop a regional ITS architecture, which will be a cornerstone of planning for effective interagency coordination and for deployment and operation of technology-based projects. In 1997, Congress passed the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) to address the need to begin to work toward regionally integrated transportation systems. In January 2001, FHWA published a rule (ITS Architecture and Standards) and FTA published a companion policy to implement section 5206(e) of TEA-21. This Rule/Policy seeks to foster regional integration by requiring that all ITS projects funded from the Highway Trust Fund be in conformance with the National ITS Architecture and officially adopted standards. "Conformance with the National ITS Architecture" is defined in the final Rule/Policy as using the National ITS Architecture to develop a "regional ITS architecture" that would be tailored to address the local situation and ITS investment needs, and the subsequent adherence of ITS projects to the regional ITS architecture. This ITS Architecture and Standards Rule/Policy continues under the current SAFETEA-LU federal transportation act. SAFETEA-LU emphasizes, among other things, congestion mitigation, real-time system management informa