Conclusion: ITS Evaluation Guide

With increased urbanisation, the next 30 years will witness a large shift in how people perceive public transport. As transport authorities, operators, and suppliers, we need to focus on the challenge of moving more people in denser cities while also addressing climate change and other environmental impacts. The decisions we make in the coming years will significantly impact the lives of billions of people.

We have a tremendous opportunity to improve lives right now. By making daily commutes faster and less stressful – we can have a major impact on how a city functions. Those improvements, spread out over millions of annual trips, will compound the benefits and positively shape our cities and cultures in multiple ways.

A modern suite of ITS solutions for transport authorities and operators reduces congestion, helps deliver more reliable public transport, and creates faster travel times and a better passenger experience. ITS helps at every step along the transport journey.

Offering multiple benefits from improved resource utilisation to better passenger experiences, ITS makes it easier for passengers to use public transport and encourages private cars to be left at home. ITS can improve planning and communications, simplify fleet management, and help with disruption management, emergency responses, and reporting. It also helps provide better driver guidance, connection protection between services and increases safety levels.

Continuous data streams, combined with the extraction of useful information using business intelligence tools, allow public transport authorities and operators to make better decisions based on facts – reducing costs whilst optimising operations to provide better services.

ITS is modular in structure. This means that solutions can be introduced step by step across a business to fix specific needs without embracing every possible technology right from the start. They can be integrated with existing third-party systems and typically have various interfaces. Many ITS interfaces are now becoming universal, based on open standards, and proven in use. These changes allow operators to reduce capital and maintenance costs, giving them rich integrated reporting, all while improving the quality and reliability of passenger services.

ITS is transforming society, and you are driving that change. By understanding ITS, you understand the broader public transport landscape, which allows you to determine what gives you the best outcome for all.

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