In the United States, the GIS for Transportation (GIS-T) market is rapidly maturing, largely as a result of numerous project initiatives stimulated by federal legislation and access to relatively cheap data sources. Many of these Departments of Transportation and Municipal Planning Organisations (MPOs) are implementing agency-wide GIS-T initiatives to improve their efficiency and decision support capabilities. In Europe, although there are a number of good examples where GIS is being successfully applied in the transportation field, the widespread adoption of GIS-T is still some way off. The reasons for this are many and varied, perhaps the most significant ones being the lack of cheap and reliable data sources tailored to transport applications, lack of expertise in GIS-T, the relatively recent introduction of GIS-T functionality in vendor projects (eg dynamic segmentation), and difficulties experienced in quantifying operational benefits prior to investment. This paper examines the current state-of-practice in GIS-T both in Europe and the United States, and compares the factors driving the adoption and use of GIS-T, such as national legislation and technological developments on both sides of the Atlantic.
Abstract