166 PART | IV ITS regulations, policies and standards
such as the use of enterprise data, the interoperability, and quicker deployment
of solutions. The ITS Strategic Plan also provided the framework for the ITS
Joint Program Office (JPO) and the collaborating organizations to conduct
research and development. The ITS Program goals were organized in themes,
that include among others: increased safety, enhanced mobility, reduced envi-
ronmental impact, information sharing, and innovation.
In a similar manner, the strategic plan of the US Department for Transporta-
tion for 2017–21 (US Department of Transportation, 2016 ) focused on R&D
and defined four critical transportation topic areas:
- public safety by reducing the number of accidents, fatalities, and injuries;
- improved mobility of people and goods, reducing congestion, and easier ac-
cess for all; - better and durable transportation infrastructure that supports the existing
transportation system; - sustainable environmental policies that aim in emission reduction.
In the past, EU countries have launched many projects on ITSs and Road
Transport Informatics, such as DRIVE for safer road infrastructures or PRO-
METHEUS for efficient traffic management and have established public-private
partnerships that focus on safety such as eSafety, INVENT, and PReVENT
(Figueiredo et al., 2001). They also established several agencies that work on
ITS projects, such as the Commission of European Communities, and the Euro-
pean Research Coordination Agency (EUREKA), which brings together 19
EU governments and European vehicle manufacturers. In the last decade, EU
countries have moved to collaborative approaches for establishing a common
infrastructure, achieving interoperability and performing scale economy. EU
countries invested in automotive open system architectures, common network
protocols (GeoNetworking), communication (ETSI EN 302 665), and messag-
ing standards (cooperative awareness messages and decentralized environmen-
tal notification messages) (Sjoberg, Andres, Buburuzan & Brakemeier, 2017).
The European Commission promotes green transportation systems in its “Euro-
pean strategy for low emission mobility (https://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/
strategies/news/2016-07-20-decarbonisation_en)”.
The secretariat of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the
Pacific [ESCAP (www.unescap.org)] is the main economic and social develop-
ment center for the United Nations in Asia and the Pacific. In order to foster the
development of ITS in the region and enhance the cooperation among its more
than 50 member countries, UN-ESCAP its mandate is to foster and nine associ-
ate members. ESCAP provides a policy dialogue platform for discussing issues
that cut across ITS and ICT. An ESCAP study on the use of ITS in the region
(United Nations ESCAP, 2015), summarizes several effective practices that
show how ITS can improve transport users’ experience, analyses the areas that
need governmental intervention and reasons why a national strategy is essen-
tial for the success of ITS projects. The same study provides links to national