Intelligent Transportation Systems (Score 1)

Cutting edge slashdot, this stuff has been around forever, the oxymoron has a national association, URL:http://www.itsa.org , I happen to chair one of its state chapters. This stuff started over 10 years ago when it was called intelligent highway vehicle systems or (IVHS), it morphed into ITS when some folks in the Federal HIGHWAY Administration realized that congress would more likely fund this if it paid lip service to other modes of transport. Over the last few years these other modes have begun to get the same level of interest or funding. For many years the transportation research board URL:http://www.trb.org thought that new road technology was concrete that set faster or lasted longer, traffic light timing or safer school bus seats. It also had an engineering constituency that reflected this. Now ITS has become a catch all for almost any software, microprocessor or sensor used in the transportation network. Just like Artificial Intelligence and other field that flatter themselves by including intelligence in their moniker, as long as its called ITS it has yet to hit the mainstream. OK so transportation engineers can use things that take advantage of Moore's law too and those funding our transportation infrastructure should invest in technology. Forget the general stuff and drill down on RFID, AVL, similiarities between traffic simulation and kinematic flow, congestion pricing, machine vision in surveillance cameras a la automatic license plate reading of every card going in and out of the city of London, etc. But a thread on ITS, please...