Momentum Issue #137:

We are only beginning 2024 but as we start our third week of the year, we have already seen a busy and successful January so far. 

The year began, as always, at the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. ITS America was engaged in multiple events throughout the meeting showcasing our strategic priorities for 2024 focused on enhancing member value, growing and influencing adoption of technology solutions and expanding education and awareness of ITS solutions. ITS America President & CEO Laura Chace spoke at several sessions covering The State of ITS, Accelerating Mobility Innovation and Integration of Advanced Air Mobility into our existing transportation network.  At the State of ITS session, she unveiled the newest resource from ITS America, the “ITS Technology Use Case Library”. This online library showcases a variety of technologies and the outcomes they deliver to communities.  The use cases include connected vehicles, AI-powered traffic management, adaptive signals, smart work zones, automated vehicles, transit signal priority, rapid transit planning, smart data centralization, and more. This repository of use cases will help many in our industry better promote the positive outcomes of ITS solutions as they interact with policymakers, transportation practitioners, as well as the general public. This resource is a living document and will be updated periodically, so we invite ITS America members to submit additional use cases for inclusion in future updates. 
 
ITS America Senior Vice President, Public Policy and Government Affairs, Tim Drake presented our latest work in Digital Infrastructure at the FHWA “Roadway Digital Infrastructure Strategy Workshop” and judged a student competition focused on artificial intelligence and Advanced Computing Applications with our partners at University of Tennessee Chattanooga, NSF, and Amazon Web Services, focused on developing the next generation transportation workforce. The best part of TRB was engaging with our member community and we are thankful to our corporate partners Michelin Mobility Intelligence and HNTB for sponsoring our “2024 ITS America Member Reception” and providing that venue for networking and partnership development.  

Later in the week, ITS America was also represented at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) by Chace where she spoke on a panel on “Rural Automated Vehicles”, keeping the focus on how automated vehicles can, and will, continue to see expanded use in communities of all sizes and can provide vitally important, lifesaving services in rural areas where their impact will grow via shared shuttles, moving medical supplies and devices, and providing mobility to older adults and those with mobility restrictions. The overarching message from CES?  Expanded use of AI is already enabling transportation solutions that enhance safety, sustainability, traveler convenience and operational efficiencies.  The pace of AI is moving faster than many expected and questions remain about how to effectively harness the opportunities associated with AI while mitigating risk and unintended consequences.  In case you missed it, ITS America and Cambridge Consultants released a report on AI in Transportation and Mobility in December.  Our new AI working group will be diving into key areas of this report and developing policy principles on AI in 2024. 

In addition to these events to kick off the new year, we are already well underway on our priorities for 2024, including: 

•  Providing input and feedback to USDOT’s National Interoperable Connectivity Deployment plan to enable a national framework for implementation of V2X.  
• Working with USDOT to inform development of a national vision, framework and ecosystem of use cases for digital infrastructure to provide the necessary foundation for investment.  
• Leading the responsible use and deployment of artificial intelligence in transportation to enable societal outcomes of safer, more sustainable, efficient and accessible mobility.  
• Creating a framework for successful deployment of automated vehicles with a focus on safety, collaboration and infrastructure needs to support their integration into the transportation system. 
• Developing policy for the next transportation reauthorization.  Now is the time to create new policy proposals so that we are prepared to share our priorities and needs with decision makers on Capitol Hill for the discussion leading up to the 2026 reauthorization.  Key areas of focus include new policy on digital infrastructure and a new technology funding program that supports sustainable funding, captures the unique needs of technology and addresses procurement challenges.  
• Creation of a new ITS America Training Academy to prepare our transportation workforce for the future. We will launch this new academy in summer of 2024 with a first course focused on transportation data – including data collection, processing, interoperability and practical use cases and applications.   

 We look forward to engaging our members in this work through our updated complement of Committees, Working Groups, and Communities of practice which can be found hhttps://itsa.org/about/standing-committees/ere. To join a committee, working group or COP, please reach out to Tina Williams at twilliams@itsa.org or Eryn Banton at ebanton@itsa.org. 

We are driving the conversation forward in 2024 to result in increased adoption and deployment of ITS solutions across the country.