Former head of the ITS Joint Program Office Shelley Row has passed the baton to a new director. Now working as an independent consultant, here she reflects on her five years at the helm of the JPO and what the future may hold for ITS in the US. During a mid-morning in Paris earlier this year, having just landed, I decided to take a trip on the city’s subway (Paris’ underground metro) into the city centre. A family with a small boy – about nine years old – boarded the same train. They were American and we st
A colleague of mine, Mike Woof, the Editor of World Highways magazine, recently attended an open day event at a major ITS research establishment, the object of which was to showcase how the use of in-vehicle ITS technologies could improve fuel consumption and reduce emissions. Mike's expertise brings him into daily contact with the types of plant and equipment used to build roads and, as he related to me afterwards, he'd gone to the event filled with enthusiasm and came away somewhat disheartened.
Astronauts report that the sensation of seeing the Earth from space is extremely humbling; revealing both the wonder of our world and its fragility with a level of clarity they have never experienced before, or after. From space everything the Astronaut has ever known is but a small green and blue blob that can be masked by the smallest obstruction. And from that distance all the countries in the world are equally far away and their inhabitants cannot be divided into rich or poor, by religion or colour.
Donald Shoup, professor of urban planning at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), tells Adam Hill about why parking is too cheap – and how Monopoly could seriously raise its game
