Cost-Effectiveness of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) Deployment in a Medium-Sized Area: Case Study with ITS Deployment Analysis System

To help transportation planners, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has recently sponsored the development of a sketch planning analysis tool for estimating the benefits and costs of intelligence transportation system (ITS) deployment. Called the ITS Deployment Analysis System (IDAS), the tool was developed by Cambridge Systematics for FHWA and operates as a postprocessor to traditional planning models that are based on the four-step planning process. IDAS was used to predict the likely benefits of deploying ITS in Chittenden County, Vermont, a medium-sized region in northwestern Vermont, to gain insight into IDAS’ applicability in evaluating ITS benefits. A sensitivity analysis was also conducted to assess the sensitivity of IDAS’ results to the choice of values of some of the model’s parameters. The sensitivity analysis demonstrates that some of the model’s parameters tend to have a more significant impact on the results than others. Finally, the results indicate that, for medium-sized areas similar to Chittenden County, coordination of signals along major arterials and transit projects for automatic vehicle location and scheduling appear to be more cost-effective than freeway and incident management systems.