Transportation transformation

By Bryan Boettger, PIPS Technology

Scott Belcher, President and CEO of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, puts his questions to Bryan Boettger of PIPS Technology.

Scott Belcher. Should the gas tax be phased out? And if so, replaced by what?
Bryan Boettger. It's no secret. The gas tax is no longer sufficient to fill the widening budget gap needed to finance repairs, improvements and expansion of the nation's transportation infrastructure.

Since it's not inflation adjusted, the purchasing power of the gas tax has decreased nearly 33 percent since 1993. Demands placed on road infrastructure in terms of miles driven are significantly outpacing the rate of new-road growth, with spending for maintenance and expansion declining almost 50 percent since the 1960s. The National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission reports that all government revenue for capital investment will total approximately one-third of the $200 billion annually necessary to maintain and improve the nation's aging transportation infrastructure.

Road-user charging appears to be the most equitable and practical method for financing the future needs of the nation's transportation infrastructure.  Among the potential solutions are VMT (vehicle miles traveled) tolls, congestion charges and express-lane premiums.

Should the public be concerned with privacy as we begin to see more widespread deployment of intelligent transportation systems? Or is this a red herring issue?
BB. Clearly we need to respect and protect the privacy of those using the transportation network to the greatest extent possible. By the same token, the issue must be put in context. These are, after all, public roadways. When you consider that citizens are routinely captured on camera entering a mall, airport or downtown business district, why should expectations be any different on a public roadway?

Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) systems such as PIPS Technology from Federal Signal, radio frequency identification, and intelligent loops for vehicle classification are now commonly employed technologies for road-use fee charging and traffic data collection. These technologies do not inherently collect personally identifiable information. They are used primarily to identify vehicles that have registered to use a service or receive some benefit such as High Occupancy Toll Lane; identify illegal, suspicious or criminal behavior; or collect generic information for better decision making.

What do you see as the future of vehicle communications? And what are some of the potential applications that no one is talking about?
BB. Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII), or vehicle communications in the more generic sense, will undoubtedly play a vital role in future systems for road user safety, transportation management and planning. Since it is expected that future vehicles will be equipped with VII, it is not difficult to envision how it will ultimately evolve as a key component in support of road user charging and traffic data collection applications.

Important to consider is the fact that there will also be the need for independent systems of vehicle identification or classification. These systems are needed to manage those exceptions (such as those that try to go around the system through some means), and to mitigate the privacy concerns previously discussed through the use of technologies that are not linked to personally identifiable information, such as license plate recognition and other intelligent sensors.

Should state and federal agencies be required to establish performance goals in areas such as safety, mobility and the environment? And if so, what should they be? And why are they important?
BB. Metrics should be a central component to any strategy designed to implement user-fee based systems for transportation infrastructure financing. Not only will the incorporation of metrics support quantitative evaluation of system performance, they will also provide an invaluable tool for identifying areas for future improvement.

Intelligent transportation systems are put in place to improve the overall efficiency of the network.  These efficiencies range from faster travel times, increased highway speeds, lower emissions and improved air quality, to elimination of bottlenecks for reduced incidence of collisions and incidents, and improved utilization of mass transit assets. Measuring these efficiencies through metrics and key performance indicators will inevitably prove critical to the success of any user-fee based system.

While it is difficult to point to one common set of metrics that will work in every environment, these are the types of measurable outputs around which objectives will need to be established. 

Bryan Boettger is vice-president and general manager of Federal Signal's Public Safety Systems business which includes public safety software systems, interoperable communications, license plate recognition systems for both public safety and intelligent transportation and lights/sirens for first responder vehicles. Bryan received an MBA from Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management and a Bachelor's Degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University.