Commercialisation of Intelligent Transportation Systems : The Case of Cooperative Systems

Enabled by scientific, technological and societal progress, and enforced by policies of authorities such as the European Union, cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is a technology of the future. However, in spite of the great efforts that have been put into research, fewer considerations have been given to how these systems can become widely spread, used and thereby fulfill the promised effect in terms of traffic management, environmental impact and road safety. This paper aims to bridge that gap and reports on a pre-study capturing the experiences of a joint effort towards cooperative ITS deployment in Sweden carried out by national authorities, regional road authorities, vehicle OEMs and telecommunications companies. More specifically, the paper presents the results from a series of stakeholder workshops exploring the possibilities for an early deployment of a cooperative ITS service that could be commercially and publicly available by 2014. One observation from the joint effort is the shift in emphasis from the identification of a single cooperative ITS service towards defining the “business eco-system model” required to enable such cooperative ITS services. Overall, this pre-study presents the necessary means in taking one more step towards publicly available cooperative ITS, highlighting questions such as “who has the motivation and takes the initiative to create an ecosystem for cooperative ITS systems?” and “what are the technical boundaries to comply to enable implementation by 2014?”.