ITS and Traffic Engineering Working Together Improving Mobility and Safety in New York City

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) apply advanced and emerging technologies in information processing, communications, control and electronics to meet surface transportation needs. Additionally, it is agreed that advanced technologies tend to develop more rapidly in the private sector and in academia where research and development is in the foreground. However a ITS project can only be successful only if you apply good old fashion Traffic Engineering. It is important to remember that the capacity to New York City to deploy ITS is not just a matter of funding and policy, but include skills availability and training, involvement of the ITS community in research, and institutional capacity. It is important to note that New York City differs in many ways with other urban cities; it has different operating environments, a population density factor, a unique geographic location, and the highest transit use in any American city. One must look into solving the demands of growing number transportation users for a more effective infrastructure and service delivery systems. To satisfy this demand, there is a need to harness and deploy the best that technology and traffic engineering has to offer.