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The first annual conference of the Intelligent Transportation Society of Connecticut was held at the Hastings International Conference Center in Hartford on Sept. 17, 1998. The 125 participants faced a day of presentations, discussions and product displays touting the potential for intelligent transportation systems to improve mobility in a state that transportation professionals agree cannot build its way out of congestion.

John Collins, president and CEO of ITS America, a national non-profit trade group, stated that intelligent transportation systems can improve mobility more quickly and less expensively than new construction, and without the opposition of neighbors that almost invariably bedevils transportation construction projects. One of the keys to successfully steering intelligent transportation into the future is public support, said Dee Angell, president and CEO of MetroPool. Angell told the conference's Strategic Planning session panelists that information about highway conditions posted on variable message signs -probably the most visible intelligent transportation device currently deployed in southwestern Connecticut - must be both accurate and useful to motorists. Robert Ramirez of the Federal Highway Administration, moderator of the session, concurred. "You will very quickly lose the confidence of the public if those messages are not accurate," he said.

Looking to the needs and desires of transportation system users to help guide the growth and development of intelligent transportation systems is a nascent trend in an industry that is outgrowing its earlier focus on "technological toys... to the point where it really makes a difference in terms of the customers' use of the transportation system," said Emil H. Frankel, former Connecticut Commissioner of Transportation and first president of ITS Connecticut.

The conference's diverse session topics and speakers made clear that Frankel's "users" doesn't mean simply commuters on highways, though it certainly encompasses them. It also means users of other transportation modes, such as rail and buses, as well as commercial vehicle operators, including the trucking industry and others transporting goods rather than people.

Keynote speaker Morton L. Downey, Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, listed productivity gains of up to a half-hour per day for truckers among the many potential benefits offered by intelligent transportation systems. "That's a big deal," Downey said. Downey also cited "very substantial" savings in the costs of accommodating growth; savings in terms of "the environmental impacts of our transportation investment;" and increased safety, savings not only in dollars but lives.

James Sullivan, Connecticut Commissioner of Transportation, said during a roundtable discussion with his counterparts from New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, that his and the neighboring states are looking to intelligent transportation systems to help address problems with roadway traffic growth. "How do we convince people to use other modes of transportation, and what do we do in the interim?" Sullivan asked. "That's ITS for us."

Those issues were addressed in sessions on transit and the tri-state Model Deployment Initiative, a pilot program using $10.3 million in federal seed money to bring together a wide range of traveler information, including real-time highway and transit data as well as bus and train schedules, information which currently is available only piecemeal. "(That) certainly doesn't do a lot to put transit as a competitor to the use of the automobile," said Jim Davis of the New York State Department of Transportation.

The Model Deployment Initiative is an ultimately self-supporting constellation of products, with free services such as traveler information centers accessible by phone, computer or strategically located kiosks to be supported by sponsorship arrangements as well as such paid fare as commercial and personalized traveler services. Products are scheduled to be available in late 1998 or 1999.

For transit users, intelligent transportation holds great promise, but start-up costs are considerable, said Stephen Warren of CTTRANSIT, the state agency that provides municipal bus service in Hartford, Stamford and New Haven. Potential applications range from such high-profile devices as electronic fare collection and "talking" buses that automatically announce each stop, to such less obvious improvements as computer-controlled engines and automated fluid management systems that reduce road calls and "keep the service out there," Warren said.

Similarly, Steven Herrmann of MTA Metro-North Railroad spoke of a heightened emphasis on customer information, a mission served by the railroad's work on a soon-to-be-implemented train tracking system that will make timely information on trains available in stations, by telephone, on the Internet and in the trains themselves. "We are trying to provide customer information so the rail traffic operators aren't the only ones who know what's going on," Hermann said.

"Mainstreaming" was an oft-heard buzzword at the conference, as transportation planners at the federal, state, regional and municipal levels spoke of incorporating intelligent transportation components into a wide array of projects. William W. Stoeckert, Chief of Highway Operations for the Connecticut Department of Transportation and the newly elected President of the Intelligent Transportation Society of Connecticut, spoke of piggybacking the installation of conduits for future communication cable onto a highway illumination project.

"We want ITS to become an item that you think about on every project that is developed," said Carl L. Gottschall of the Federal Highway Administration. Funding is available for research as well as for implementation, under both highway and transit categories, Gottschall said.