ITS and sustainability Chapter | 13 153Sustainable transportation is the capacity to support the mobility needs
of a society in a manner that is the least damageable to the environment and
does not impair the mobility needs of future generations (Rodrigue, Comtois,
& Slack, 2017). It should contribute to environmental, social, and economic
objectives. It is therefore important that we have a policy framework to support
sustainable transport, which includes low carbon modes of transport, energy
efficiency, and user-friendly transport initiatives, integration of transport and
land use planning.
Besides the three major pillars of sustainable development, Rodrigue et al.
(2017) argues that we should also consider to the question of whether sustain-
ability should be imposed by regulation or be the outcome of market forces.
According to Rodrigue et al. (2017), societies do not contribute to environmen-
tal problems at the same level. These authors believe that sustainability can be
expressed on two spatial levels:
• global that is long term stability of the earth’s environment and availability
of resources to support human activities and
• local that is often related to urban areas in terms of jobs, housing, and envi-
ronmental pollution.
Although the transport sector has the potential to improve the lives of the
people, currently there is a lack of a leadership at the global level without a
clear set of principles to transform the sector. (Mohieldin & Vandycke 2017), It
is important that actions are taken to ensure that we have a plan for sustainable
ITS. Possible suggestions are:
• to define clearly the objectives underpinning sustainable mobility;
• to give due consideration for safety, equity, and climate for all road projects;
• to adopt the cocreation of value approach for ITS design;
• to use new technology such as IOT, Big data, cloud computing to support
future mobility;
• to plan a strategy for sustainable transport as a priority at local, national and
global levels;
• to promote an integrated approach to policymaking at the national, regional
and local levels for transport services and systems to promote sustainable
development;
• to develop alternative means of transport.
To develop sustainable ITS is not trivial. There are many issues that need to
be considered. These issues would depend on the economy, social and priority
of the country concerned. No country is an island; the world is interconnected.
It is important to remember that there are different stakeholders involved from
local, to regional to global levels. Each stakeholder has different values. These
different values must be addressed and met. There may be conflicting values
between stakeholders. To overcome the different values we must plan the design
of a sustainable ITS based on the co- creation of values.