Integrating the southern California ITS priority corridor.

The Southern California ITS Priority Corridor was initiated by the 1991 ISTEA legislation. The concept established by the involved agencies included both an expansion of ATMS and ATIS in Southern California as well as a fully integrated and interconnected series of systems. The systems would be able to share information (traffic flow, incidents, transit data, etc.), share control of field devices (CMS, CCTV Cameras, etc.) and to coordinate their traffic management operations. Over a dozen systems have been built or are planned for the six Southern California counties from Los Angeles to San Diego. Wide area integration brings several challenges. Among the most prominent are: (1) establishing interface standards for exchange of data; (2) creating interagency agreements for collaborative operation; (3) fielding a common core set of capabilities within each system; and (4) instituting a management structure to maintain and exploit this capability to interoperate between agencies. The members of the Priority Corridor either have addressed or are addressing all of these issues, and are creating an integrated transportation system for Southern California.