December 13, 2022
The Year In Review
Each year, ITS America celebrates the hard work it completes to support its members and the transportation technology industry by documenting ITS America’s accomplishments. The past year was one of major successes for ITS America, from convening a global World Congress to realizing the historic investments of the IIJA with expanded funding eligibility for technology, to bringing new voices into the ITS America community and continuing to make a strong industry even stronger.
2022 was a year of transition, partnership and growth. The new executive team continued to develop strong partnerships, grow revenue, and expand ITS America’s membership base to accomplish our goals. It was also a year of building and strategy, culminating in a 3-year strategic plan that will guide the organization to success through 2026.
As we look forward to 2023, it is important to look back at this year’s achievements and practice gratitude for all the work, partnerships, networks and services we’ve grown. Here are a few of the highlights of our 2022 accomplishments.
Membership
ITS America brought on a new director of Membership to better serve our members and strengthen our relationships. It was a year of strong growth, adding 40 new private and public members that will make our industry and our organization better through their involvement.
Our Member Webinar series continues to be a member favorite. This year, we hosted seven presentations while our membership newsletters (Momentum and Policy Rundown) continue to see increased readership. ITS America continues to deepen its relationship with our State Chapters. In 2022, ITS America spoke at nine state chapters and three regional events that covered 23 states. We will continue to work in partnership with our state and local leaders to expand interest in ITS.
Technical Programs
The Technical Programs Department had a successful year focused on continuing to engage, convene and educate the ITS community. It conducted research focused on emerging technologies and mobility trends and formed new relationships that enable continued knowledge transfer to our members and industry partners. ITS America published a range of technical publications, presentations and technical insights to inform staff, members, and others in the industry about emerging mobility topics and associated lessons-learned and future-facing considerations.
The Technical Programs department organized, hosted and facilitated more than 20 webinars and virtual events highlighting several USDOT-led initiatives such as the ITS4US Program, the University Transportation Center Guest Speaker Series, State Chapter Technical Training, and expanded Support for National Operations Center of Excellence. We successfully expanded our work with USDOT and the Department of Energy to reflect the growth in ITS and the intersection of sustainability and transportation technology.
ITS America also conducted quarterly MOD peer exchanges and hosted the “MOD/MaaS Global Forum” in coordination with ERTICO and ITS Asia Pacific at the ITS World Congress, discussing and exploring topics, opportunities and challenges to advancing safe, and sustainable mobility.
Events and Education
We returned to in-person events after nearly two years impacted by COVID restrictions. We began with the Digital Infrastructure Forums and Workshops to spotlight the importance of transportation technology to save and improve lives – and how USDOT must harness tech and innovation in the IIJA program funding. ITS America’s members convened public and private sector champions along with USDOT officials in D.C. to discuss the importance of digital infrastructure with continued discussions at the July TRB ARTS Symposium and the September ITS World Congress.
ITS America co-hosted an AV Workforce Roundtable and partnered with labor, private and public sectors, workforce development programs, researchers and USDOT to initiate a conversation on collaborative opportunities to reskill, retrain, support and empower workers in the automation space to expand access to innovation in the transportation sector. The conversation was successful in bringing labor and industry together and will continue into 2023.
In September, ITS America hosted the ITS World Congress in Los Angeles. This year’s Congress convened more than 6,000 attendees from 64 countries at the leading global event that brought together world leaders, practitioners, policymakers, researchers and private industry leaders to advance and unite the ITS industry with a renewed dedication to making our transportation system work better for all. The theme of Transformation by Transportation resonated with leaders and practitioners with more than 200 exhibitors, 33 sponsors, 64 countries represented, over 200 students and over 20 real-time demonstrations and tech tours.
At the World Congress, ITS America’s Smart Infrastructure Committee piloted the first-of-its-kind B2G partnering sessions, where businesses and public agencies could meet at the conference and discuss ideas on how to partner and learn about private sector innovations that could solve unique public agency challenges. More than 50 business-to-business partnering meetings were held to advance grants and other IIJA funding opportunities to scale tech.
In addition to our in-person offerings, we continued to offer webinars throughout 2022, with 19 webinars reaching 1,600 attendees on several topics.
Strategic Partnerships
ITS America has continued to facilitate relationships to benefit our members and advance scaled deployment of ITS technologies. In 2022, ITS America hosted events and partnered with numerous groups including USDOT, the Public Spend Forum, AWS Accelerator, National League of Cities, Comotion, AASHTO, the Institute for Transportation Engineers, California Mobility Center, the Open Mobility Foundation, and the United States Trade and Development Agency just to name a few.
These relationships provide new avenues to educate others on the benefits of ITS technology, learn from peers, and explore new ways to reach out to those most likely to use ITS in growing safety, sustainability, equity and access in their communities.
Policy and Advocacy
It was a successful year for ITS America in our Nation’s Capital. The passage of the IIJA greatly expanded access to federal dollars for the implementation of technology in all modes of transportation in both formula and discretionary programs. We will see the continued impact as USDOT makes more funds from the IIJA available for technology implementation and study over the life of the bill.
On the legislative side, ITS America President and CEO Laura Chace submitted testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Our team worked closely with Representatives Bob Latta and Debbie Dingell in the process of launching their Autonomous Vehicles Caucus earlier this year and beginning the process of developing the strategy for the next Congress.
ITS America was highly active in responding to regulatory actions on behalf of the industry, many of which stemmed from the IIJA, including: USDOT Vulnerable Road User RFI; General Buy America Waiver; SMART Buy America Waiver; Transformation Transportation Advisory Council (TTAC) Nominations; Thriving Communities Initiative; New Car Assessment Program; USDOT Strategic Research Plan; Electric Vehicle Charging RFC; and the NETT Council.
V2X Summit: After a disappointing court ruling affirming the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to reduce the safety spectrum, ITS America proactively worked with USDOT to jointly host a V2X Summit in August in D.C. to bring together the connected vehicle community to demand action. With ITS America’s advocacy and strong member engagement, USDOT has committed to acting and ITS America staff and its V2X Committee have proposed a national V2X strategy to USDOT to implement in 2023.
- V2X Deployment Plan: Following the V2X Summit, ITS America provided USDOT with detailed recommendations on what to include in its National Deployment Plan, identifying actions to (1) foster a stable and inviting regulatory environment; (2) establish V2X deployment targets and milestones; and (3) facilitate deployment, research and strategic preparedness.
National Roadway Safety Strategy Advocacy: ITS America met with Senior USDOT officials to express our frustration that the NRSS did not include references to connected vehicle technologies and glossed over automation. Senior ITS America crafted a response to the strategy highlighting how it must be strengthened to include transportation technology. ITS America identified specific technologies that could be incorporated into each of the Strategy’s five categories that fall within the NTSB’s safe systems approach advancing: (1) safer people, (2) safer roads, (3) safer vehicles, (4) safer speeds and (5) post-crash care.
USDOT Listening Sessions: ITS America hosted over eight listening sessions with key USDOT officials in member events. Members met with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Implementation Director to advocate for technology’s inclusion in IIJA programs, the Secretary’s Office to share feedback on the USDOT Innovation Principles, held listening sessions with Federal Transit Administration leadership to understand the barriers to implementing tech in public transportation, met with NHTSA officials to discuss barriers to automation and connectivity, met with the FHWA Turner Fairbanks Highway Research Center to discuss research opportunities, and many other events in regular member calls and meetings.
Advisory Committees & Working Groups
ITS America’s six standing advisory committees and eight working groups continued to provide insight on all areas of our industry, focusing on advancing key deliverables or technical resources.
We would like to thank all our 2022 Committee and Working Group leaders for their indefatigable work over the past year. Our achievements are attributable to a strong relationship between our member leaders and staff working closely together, and we know that our new 2023 leadership will continue to build on this success.
The Automated Vehicles Committee focused on fostering key DOT relationships and created a memo crosswalking how ITS America’s Automated Vehicle Guiding Principles support USDOT’s Innovation Principles. The committee also hosted joint meetings with TRB in July at ARTS, in September at the ITS World Congress and in December in Washington, D.C. to explore the perspectives of the AV industry, state DOTs, and cities on key barriers to AV deployment and opportunities to scale this technology.
The Emerging Technologies Committee focused on three topics: personal delivery devices (e.g., sidewalk delivery robots), digital twinning and urban air mobility. The committee’s goal is to identify legislative and regulatory barriers and opportunities to safely advance emerging technologies, monitor national trends and related research, and promote best practices including those involving private and public sector partnerships. In 2022, the Committee developed one-pagers on these technologies, conducteda gap analysis to identify who within our membership and the industry should be at the table for these discussions and developed a map of urban air mobility pilots across the country.
The Smart Infrastructure Standing Committee focused this year on launching a new IIJA working group, a new broadband working group, developing IIJA implementation recommendations for USDOT, launching a new website, and hosting business development partnering conversations at the ITS World Congress.
The IIJA Implementation Working Group surveyed ITS America’s membership and the larger ITS industry to understand IIJA opportunities and challenges, including what resources the ITS industry needs to implement these new and expanded programs and used that information to develop key recommendations for USDOT. The Committee and ITS America staff also launched a comprehensive IIJA website and webinar series to keep members in the know about technology grants and funding opportunities in “decoding” the IIJA.
The Mobility on Demand Committee focused on reimagining transit, focused on ensuring transit meets community needs and prioritizes equity; identifying barriers to adoption; and discussing public-private partnerships to advance MOD. MOD serves as a tool to advance equitable mobility, so members discussed exploring opportunities to leverage demand-responsive mobility options and embrace new transit technologies, as well as identify barriers to MOD. In the MOD working groups, Friends of MOD hosted several industry-wide peer exchange discussions that were supported by USDOT’s Joint Programs Office. The UBM/Mobility Wallet Working Group developed resources, including a one-pager on equity and transportation and MOD-related opportunities in IIJA.
The Sustainability & Resilience Committee focused on the intersection of ITS technologies and its role in advancing electrification, decarbonization and resilience technologies, and continued to engage in national conversations with IBTTA on road-user charging. This included State DOT Resiliency Outreach, a Building Resilient Infrastructure Workshop, providing comments on National Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure, and IBTTA/ITS America Road Users Charging Network engagement.
The V2X and Connected Transportation Committee worked extensively to advance the deployment of V2X by conducting an industry-wide 30 MHz Application Map Survey, urging USDOT to develop a national V2X deployment plan, engaging with USDOT to craft a successful V2X Summit, and developing consensus V2X terminology though the V2X decoded working group. The successes included a National 30 MHz Application Map Survey, a two-day V2X Summit that ITS America advised DOT on, informing the event, providing speakers, and encouraging USDOT to commit to developing a National V2X plan. ITS America then convened our members at World Congress to identify our recommendations for a National V2X deployment plan, and provided that document to USDOT to inform their next steps. Additionally, the committee continued its advocacy with the FCC for approval of the outstanding C-V2X waivers as well as the work of the V2X Decoded working group in developing a set of definitions used in relation to V2X applications as well as ADS and ADAS.
In addition to those already in full swing, this year we launched two new working groups: Cybersecurity Working Group and a Broadband Working Group.
The Cybersecurity Working Group is focused on emphasizing nationally and globally how technologies must be secured and personal information protected. The goals of the Working Group included: surveying members to assess the ITS industry’s needs around cybersecurity; sharing information from other national cybersecurity standards bodies with the ITS community; and sharing lessons learned. In 2023, the focus will turn to hosting a series of presentations from guest speakers in the cybersecurity space to increase ITS America connections with leaders in the field and increase member exposure, cataloging and publishing a compilation of cybersecurity tools and information as a resource to our members, and updating ITS America’s cybersecurity policy recommendations.
The Broadband Working Group was launched in response to the $65 billion in funding allocated for broadband deployment and little national standardization in how states and cities use these resources. ITS America convened a Broadband Working Group in August 2022 to help bring together federal officials, state leaders and telecommunications practitioners to help harmonize the way states implement broadband. The Working Group’s goals are to host peer exchanges in 2023, and the group has already met with the Build America Bureau and National Telecommunications and Information Administration to help coordinate this group with the State Broadband Leaders Network. The Working Group also intends to harmonize state FHWA division administration rules and best practices on using broadband in highway rights of way.
The entire ITS America team is proud to represent our members and advance the critical work you do each and every day in support of the vision of a safer world. With your support, we look forward to further delivering a safer, greener, smarter transportation system for all in 2023.
