ITS has long been considered to be an "advanced" tool primarily for the wealthy and developed economies. This situation is changing rapidly. The study has reviewed the current status of ITS in numerous developing and transitional countries, to understand the background and requirements of ITS deployment in these regions. It has revealed that the rapidly falling costs of IT equipments, the prevalence of tried and tested "off the shelf" ITS solution has enabled ITS deployment in these regions. Another important aspect was the prevalence of other general purpose IT infrastructure, such as mobile phone networks, and the Internet, and digital road maps, which has allowed new services, or old services to be provided in a different way with much less outlay. On the other hand, there are issues that stem beyond the traffic problems and their technological solutions. Social and organizational issues need to be addressed. The need for constant system updates, maintenance and training needs to be stressed. Another issue is the importance of thinking ITS as a whole, rather than seeing it as a collection of individual systems. Sporadic deployment has sometimes led to conflicts and incompatibility between various system, which may negate the potential benefits of ITS. This can be avoided by proper planning. The study also identifies the institutional arrangements that support the effective deployment of ITS, and summarises the findings into a toolkit that can assist the decision makers to identify the promising solutions and the issues that accompany them. For the covering abstract see ITRD E135448.
Abstract