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

  • Australian road pricing, road funding needs more debate
    January 31, 2012
    Everyone in the road transport industry in Australia is talking road pricing - everyone, that is, except the politicians. Christine Keyes reports. At the end of 2008, Australia's road transport industry was wringing its collective hands, unable to raise more than $100 million from an individual bank for any Public Private Partnership (PPP). The A$750 million Peninsula Link project, announced by the Victoria Government in March 2009, was the first road project in the country to be put out to market as an ava
  • Tighten up on cyber security before hackers infiltrate ITS infrastructure
    October 19, 2015
    This year’s ITS World Congress in Bordeaux will have three sessions dedicated to cyber security and the issue will also be addressed under connected and automated vehicles categories. Jon Masters finds out why. American security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek attracted international press coverage recently when they demonstrated how they could hack into and take control of a vehicle from a remote laptop. While the implications are clearly serious for vehicle manufacturers, highway and transpor
  • Dignity should be key measure of MaaS success
    December 4, 2020
    Money isn’t everything: what if we made dignity into the key measure of success for MaaS? Crissy Ditmore sets out her vision statement for the industry’s developers
  • C-ITS in Europe: It’s the governance, stupid!
    March 3, 2023
    Cooperative ITS (C-ITS) is coming – in fact, it’s already here. But who has responsibility for making it work? Richard Lax of Kapsch TrafficCom thinks there are lessons to be learned from the European experience