The U.S. Department of Transportation presented an overview of new and existing ITS JPO resources for communities implementing ITS during the December 2021 ITS America Annual Meeting. In addition to the ITS JPO Peer programs mentioned in a earlier Rural Transportation website post, USDOT offers several new or lesser-known resources to support communities deploying ITS or analyzing the costs-benefits of ITS projects:
- Putting People First: Smart Cities and Communities is a new report that explores the benefits and successes behind smart city deployments. Heralded benefits are improved transportation safety, technology that affects climate change, supports transparency and opportunity for public input, broader mobility choices, and spurring economic growth.
- Accelerating ITS Deployment Areas encompass research, analytics, training, and tools for efficient ITS deployment through the following programs. Support is available for the life cycle of an ITS deployment project from pre-deployment stages to deployment and evaluation.
- ITS Deployment Evaluation (including benefit-cost analysis and lessons learned)
- ITS Professional Capacity Building (T3 webinars, training, and technical assistance)
- ITS Architecture and Standards (technology tracking and standard setting)
- ITS Communications (events, news, publications, and videos)
- ITS Deployment Evaluation has been available for over 25 years. Anyone can access the evaluation database at https://www.itskrs.its.dot.gov/ to search for successes, benefits, statistics, executive briefings, resources, and lessons learned. For example, by clicking Benefits, a user can search by topic. The following screenshot shows a sample search for “Road Weather Management” examples. The database is a viable way to learn about recent ITS deployments in states and communities across the U.S.
