Title:

INTELLIGENT VEHICLE HIGHWAY SYSTEMS: CHALLENGE FOR THE FUTURE

Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems is a new paradigm for transportation in this nation. It involves the integration of technology in areas such as communications, information systems, sensors, and operation research methods with conventional transportation infrastructure to address many transportation issues that confront the nation at this time. It is a fundamentally new way of thinking about transportation. IVHS has the potential for substantially improving our transportation systems. The goals and objectives of IVHS include improved safety. reduced congestion, increased and higher quality mobility, improved environmental quality and energy efficiency. improved economic productivity, the development of an IVHS supply industry in the United States, major changes in the transportation profession, and the development and deployment of a variety of new technologies and new partnerships between the public and private sector. While IVHS has the potential, substantial work needs to take place if IVHS is to be successful. In this paper, we have discussed the institutional barriers that IVHS faces Further, there are important hardware and software technological challenges that must be met. In 1986, an informal group of academics, federal and state transportation officials, and representatives of the private sector began to meet to discuss the future of the surface transportation system in the United States. These meetings were motivated by several key factors. First, the group was looking ahead to 1991 when a new federal transportation bill was scheduled to be enacted. It was envisioned that this 1991 transportation bill would be the first one in the post-Interstate era. The Interstate system, a $120 billion dollar program, had been the keystone of the highway system in the United States since the mid-1950s. By 1991 this project would be largely complete. A new vision for the transportation system in the United States needed to be developed. Second, despite the advances in highway transportation in the United States brought about by the development of the Interstate, a large number of major problems remained. First, congestion had been growing dramatically over the past twenty to thirty years-leading to gridlock conditions in a number of US cities. Further, it was clear that we could no longer build our way out of these congestion problems because of economic, political and social constraints, particularly in urban areas.

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