How was the Vision developed within INTRO?

The immediate future will be shaped by current trends, the transport system requirements, the resources available and unforeseen future events.  To establish a vision of the Intelligent Road we have to make assumptions about the political and social climate over the next twenty to thirty years.  The Vision needs to capture the key elements of road transport, and these go beyond the physical roads themselves; they also include the vehicles, the drivers, the suppliers and operators, the governments, and all of those affected directly or indirectly by road traffic (FEHRL Vision 2025).

A vision should recognise that there are differences between different road hierarchies.  Looking at a vision in terms of different types of road is indeed essential, as a rural secondary road is unlikely ever to have the same level of service and “intelligence” as an urban motorway. Different visions would therefore apply to different road environments, according to the needs for “intelligence” and also the socio-economic and business case for the deployment of intelligent systems.  There are also variations in available budgets for road investment, hence visions should be flexible enough to allow for different solutions.

Therefore the visions developed hereafter were clustered following some major functional concerns for which, according to INTRO partners, providing intelligence to roads presents a great added value (safety issues, user services, infrastructure sustainability, transport and traffic capacity, global issues including environment, economy and social aspects) and road conditions (five example road types were proposed, differentiated by their physical characteristics, speed limit, traffic & vehicles characteristics as well as safety problems).

For each road type a range of ITS services is considered and each one was rated as “required” (systems and services that are a minimum essential requirement), or “recommended” (desirable but of secondary importance and according to local circumstances, cost, business case, etc).

The next stage is to obtain feedback from beyond the project through the consultation of the external stakeholders; this is exactly the purpose of the present survey.

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