Skip to main content

Transportation 2.0: Detroit shows way forward

OEMs, suppliers, and technology firms are in a race to modernise our current transportation systems. These changes will bring about adaptations in how people fundamentally interact with transportation and how they provide and receive goods and services. What new business models will emerge from these changes? What challenges? Will modalities be combined? These are the overarching questions that are vital to prepare markets, governments, and researchers for the future. Delegates at the ITS America Annual Me
May 25, 2018 Read time: 3 mins
© F11photo | Dreamstime.com
OEMs, suppliers, and technology firms are in a race to modernise our current transportation systems. These changes will bring about adaptations in how people fundamentally interact with transportation and how they provide and receive goods and services. What new business models will emerge from these changes? What challenges? Will modalities be combined? These are the overarching questions that are vital to prepare markets, governments, and researchers for the future.  Delegates at the ITS America Annual Meeting Detroit have a unique opportunity to hear about, and understand, the overarching questions facing us.


Connectivity, Autonomy and the Future of Transportation and Transport

AI, Machine Learning, and Autonomy are spreading through multiple modes of transportation and transport, and the use of these technologies will grow in ubiquity. As these technologies become standard, we will see multiple changes in the combining and expansion of modes and it will change the nature of how we interact with goods and services. How will markets change? How will the workforce adapt? How will cities and states manage the data generated? What type of productivity growth will this create? How will commercial fleets change? What opportunities and challenges does the future hold? What is the next generation of autonomy and what is beyond autonomy?

Electrification and Infrastructure

As we move to a new transportation network with increasingly electrified vehicles using more sustainable energy sources, investment in intelligent infrastructure becomes a critical need.  How do we build and maintain the core infrastructure? How does electrification change freight? What are the next steps in creating a majority electric fleet? What is next?

Regulatory and Financial Challenges Related to Deployment of ITS Technologies

ITS technologies hold incredible potential to make communities more safe, accessible, equitable, sustainable, and economically vibrant. Unfortunately, building and deploying ITS technologies will not be easy. Before technologies are deployed on a large scale, regulatory and funding consideration will need to be addressed.  How can cities, states, and technology companies work together to find solutions that will ultimately bring ITS technologies to communities large and small across the country?

Cybersecurity and Privacy Opportunities and Challenges

Cybersecurity and privacy are both key components of an intelligent transportation system.  How should the industry move forward in seeking out a universal framework?  What are the greatest challenges presented by cybersecurity?  What opportunities are created for new emergent firms focused on cyber security in the ITS space? What is the future of cybersecurity as edge and quantum computing come on line?

Transportation Systems Operations

Emerging technology is all essentially geared to the same goal: addressing practical challenges in the day-to-day operation of our transportation facilities. Whereas connected and automated vehicle systems showcase the future of transportation systems operations, proven intelligent transportation systems and traffic management technologies continue to offer the potential to improve the operations and safety of the transportation network.

The Impacts & Opportunities of Big Data

As the availability of operational data grows, the transportation community faces challenges associated with how to manage, store and analyse all of this data. These challenges, and associated opportunities, will be exacerbated by the deployment of connected vehicles. It is important to learn from other sectors dealing with this influx of data in order to address challenges and optimise benefits.

Related Content

  • Do we need a new approach to ITS and traffic management?
    January 31, 2012
    In an article which has implications for the European Electronic Toll Service, ASECAP's Kallistratos Dionelis asks whether the approach we currently take to major ITS system implementations is always the best or healthiest. I was asked recently to write a paper on the technology-oriented future of transport. To paraphrase, I started with: "The goal of European policy-makers is to establish a transport system which meets society's economic, social and environmental needs, satisfying in parallel a rising dema
  • CES 2020: ITS does Vegas
    March 3, 2020
    Keen to find out what the future holds, 170,000 people gathered in Las Vegas for CES 2020 to see 20,000 product debuts and 4,400 exhibitors... and ITS International was there too (All images: CES®)
  • From hype to action: Cambridge Consultants releases real-world guide to AI adoption
    July 23, 2025

    Cambridge Consultants is releasing its third major joint report with ITS America: A Guide to Practical Next Steps for AI Implementation, which can be downloaded now by clicking here.

  • Mega trends will challenge transport technology
    June 5, 2015
    Jon Masters investigates some of the longer term trends that will shape transportation over the next 20 years. Business analysts and investors have already placed their bets on a future of technological smart mobility services. In December last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Uber, the on-demand taxi and lift share smartphone app and start-up business, had been valued at $41.2 billion which, as the Journal reported, is an incredible vote of confidence for a company only five years old.