ABSTRACT
Since 1999, it has become increasingly clear that the issue of efficiently moving people and goods is far more complex than previously imagined. The problem is not just confined to surface transportation, that is, vehicles and roadways; it affects trains, passenger planes, air cargo, ferries, ships, and all available and currently utilized mode of transportation. This realization had helped foster the broader notion of intelligent transportation system (ITS), superseding intelligent vehicle highway systems (IVHS). Two researchers, Kan Chen and Bob Ervin, conceived the acronym IVHS and were instrumental in expanding its scope and renaming it ITS (Prof. Chelsea White, pers. comm., 2010). Clearly, to synthesize a genuine and practical solution at the national level, possibly international level, one must adopt a holistic approach that takes into consideration complex and asynchronous interdependencies between the many transportation modes and guided by a fundamental goal, namely, minimize the transit time for all travelers and merchandise in transit, subject to fair distribution of the available resources. In the not-too-distant future, space travel to the moon and other artificial satellites and planets in our solar system will become routine and may need to be accommodated within the ITS system. Their unique attributes should be taken into consideration today, while planning out the fundamentals of the ITS architecture, so that integration will be seamless in the future.
