The development of national and international standards for Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), including electronic toll collection (ETC) systems, has many political pitfalls, and even the ITS industry and its customers have been clamouring for standards to which all vendors will adhere. The Japanese began their ITS technology evaluations in 1995, as a basis for developing system specifications. In 1997, they will test their newly specified ETC system, and in 1999 they will implement it. Europe has created the four-part draft standard CEN278, with the hope that it will become an international (ISO) standard also. ITS standards development is still in its infancy in the USA, complicated by politics, vested interests, varying needs, and discrepancies between standards efforts and application priorities. Standards agencies in all three parts of the world are mapping their work onto the seven-layer Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model for computer networks, by assigning standards issues to their appropriate layers. Differences of approach in different parts of the world cause considerable difficulties. Standards committees have to penetrate installed bases and vendor biases to select the best, most flexible technology. Once ITS standard technology adopted, compliancy still needs to be implemented.
Samenvatting