Intelligent Transportation Systems

IIT Madras sponsored by the Ministry of Urban Development. The contents of this report reflect the views of the authors who are responsible for the facts and the accuracy of the data presented herein. The contents do not necessarily reflect the official views or policies of the Ministry that funded the project or IIT Madras. This report is not a standard, specification, or regulation. The rapidly increasing vehicle population in India, spurred by the population boom and economic upturn lays a critical burden on traffic management in the metropolitan cities and towns of the country. million motorised vehicles were sold in India. Economy-induced automobile usage is complicated further by the constant influx of rural population into urban areas, thus making enormous demands on the transportation infrastructure in an overloaded region. The heterogeneity of economy and the physical limit on how much additional infrastructure a city can hold complicate transport management further. World Bank reports that the economic losses incurred on account of congestion and poor roads alone run as high as $6 billion a year in India. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is an established route to resolve, or at least minimize traffic problems. ITS encompass all modes of transportation-air, sea, road and rail, and intersects various components of each mode-vehicles, infrastructure, communication and operational systems. Various countries have developed strategies and techniques, based on their geographic, cultural, socioeconomic and environmental background, to integrate the various components into an interrelated system. In general, any of the ITS applications uses a Traffic Management Centre (TMC) where data is collected, analysed and combined with other operational and control concepts to manage the complex transportation problems. Typically, several agencies share the administration of transport infrastructure, through a network of traffic operation centres. There is often, a localized distribution of data and information and the centres adopt different criteria to achieve the goals of traffic management. This interdependent autonomy in operations and decision-making is essential because of the heterogeneity of demand and performance characteristics of interacting subsystems. The major objective of ITS is to evaluate, develop, analyse and integrate new sensor, information, and communication technologies and concepts to achieve traffic efficiency, improve environmental quality, save energy, conserve time, and enhance safety and comfort for drivers, pedestrians, and other traffic groups. The adoption of location and information based technologies into vehicles, infrastructure, traffic management and traveler information services have shown dramatic improvements in the safe, and …