Product standards create benefits. For consumers, they lower costs for goods and services by providing a greater choice of vendors, and for manufacturers, they shape a competitive terrain that sharpens business practices, spurs innovation, and offers opportunities for companies with new equipment and services. This has been observed in industry time and time again, and although exceptions can be found, standards generally benefit both the consumer and industry. For these reasons, many industries have undergone some degree of standardization. Standards have left their mark on the transportation industry as well. The width of rail gauges, the color of traffic signs and signals, and the performance standards for air traffic controllers are all firmly embedded and accepted in transportation industry operations. However, standards for intelligent transportation systems (ITS)-a comparative newcomer to the transportation arena-are still being developed. And the lack of proven standards in today's ITS product market has put public transportation agencies between a rock and a hard place. Does the agency choose ITS based on a vendor's proprietary technology? A vendor can provide a turnkey system, but the agency is then locked into a single-vendor relationship, which is risky. After all, companies fail, technology shifts, and product lines disappear. Or does the agency venture into the open standards market, for which both standards and products are still emerging? The promise of open systems and the cost benefits of interoperable and interchangeable equipment are appealing. But for many ITS applications, these benefits could be several years away, and the agency needs a workable ITS solution today. For its part, the U.S. DOT is encouraging public agencies to choose standards-based ITS over systems based on proprietary technologies. The U.S. DOT believes that standards based ITS establish a sound technical foundation for present and future ITS deployments, providing agencies with significant operational and cost benefits over the life of an ITS network. At the same time, the U.S. DOT understands that proprietary products and services have dominated the ITS market for years by providing agencies with comparatively easy ITS deployments. The U.S. DOT realizes that the success of the ITS Standards Program rests with state and local agencies and that creating demand within those agencies for standards-based ITS is crucial. In order to increase the demand for standards-based ITS among agencies, the U.S. DOT recognizes it must (1) provide agencies with educational resources about ITS standards to help clarify technical and institutional issues; and (2) provide technical support to agencies that decide to use standards in their ITS deployments. In fact, the U.S. DOT has such an effort in place.
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