While Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) create new opportunities for enhancing transportation, those opportunities come with challenges that require rigorous R&D. Due to the complexity of the very nature of transportation problems and the required variety of expertise to address such problems, no research institution can practically maintain a critical mass of such diverse backgrounds. Many universities, public organizations, and societies attempt to cover as many aspects of transportation research as their resources allow. Inevitably, niches and specializations form and lead to narrower focuses on selected subsets of the overall problem. Efforts, no matter how comprehensive or ambitious, are limited by the capacity of the available researchers and resources. The nature of ITS R&D is complex due to the following:

• Current ITS solutions are mostly stand-alone systems that are used by a small group of users with little or no support for larger-scale collaboration and integration. A vivid example is the incompatible software platforms at different traffic operation centers.