Smart Solution Spotlight

2010.04.23

(Date: 23 April, 2010)

ITS America has recently launched a new award project to recognize the best and most innovative uses of intelligent transportation systems to help communities create a safer, cleaner, more efficient and sustainable transportation system – The ITS America Smart Solution Spotlight award.

The award is presented for ITS technologies that have made a real-world impact, or have demonstrated near-term potential, to improve public safety, enhance mobility, create more livable communities, strengthen economic competitiveness, and promote environmental sustainability.
Among the Smart Solution Spotlight projects highlighted so far are:

• A traffic signal optimization and CO2 reduction project in Portland, Oregon that resulted in the reduction of more than 157,000 metric tons of CO2 in just six years. This is the equivalent to removing more than 30,000 passenger vehicles off the road for an entire year.
• A high-tech, state-of-the-art snow and ice removal system in southeast Michigan that has significantly improved the region’s safety and winter maintenance. This project involves the use of satellite-based fleet management technology to track more than 400 winter road maintenance vehicles covering over 5,500 miles of roads and serving a population of more than three million people.
• The highly successfully PrePass program that allows for commercial trucks to be weighed, identified and credentialed at specially equipped truck stops – while they are driving at highway speeds. Since this project began in 1995, it has saved more than 150 million gallons of fuel; 31 million hours of time; $2.3 billion in operational costs; and more than 335,000 metric tons of tailpipe emissions have been eliminated.
• A state-of-the-art interactive hurricane evacuation status map in Houston, Texas that incorporates the latest ITS technologies to allow traffic managers, law enforcement, emergency medical services and other first responders to use real-time information to coordinate large-scale evacuations more effectively for the region’s 5.9 million residents.
• And an innovative new program designed to increase carpooling by matching drivers with potential riders using real-time, on-demand technology. With 76 percent of all cars on the road being Single Occupancy Vehicles, this program is seeking to turn millions of empty car seats into a national on-demand ride-share program to reduce congestion and CO2 emissions.

* “This article has been brought to you as part of the cooperation between ITS America and ITS Japan.”