Testing A Proposed Decision-oriented Framework To Understand Its Deployment Issues: An Examination Of The Travinfo Atis Project

Deployment is at the forefront of current activity in California in the field of intelligent transportation systems. It is important to understand the multitude of issues associated with such deployment to increase the likelihood of a successful deployment initiative. A review and synthesis of the literature on deployment issues have been performed. This served as a basis for development of a proposed decision-oriented framework that may be used to recognize and organize issues for the deployment of intelligent transportation systems. The applicability of this framework to intelligent transportation systems is examined and tested. The test focuses on the specific case of the TravInfo Advanced Traveler Information System deployment based in the San Francisco Bay Area. TravInfo was a Field Operational Test sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration and was organized as a public/private partnership to capitalize on the different talents of both the public and private sectors. TravInfo was initially conceived in 1992, funded by the Federal Highway Administration's Field Operational Test program in 1993, began operation in September 1996 and recently completed its Field Operational Test phase in September 1998. The objective of the TravInfo FOT was to collect, integrate and broadly disseminate timely and accurate multimodal traveler information through a range of products and services, with different prices and capabilities, to meet consumer needs. TravInfo has an open- access database and architecture that allows the private sector participants to retrieve the data free of charge and re-package it for its ultimate dissemination to travelers via their commercial products and services. After the Field Operational Test concluded, the scope or magnitude of TravInfo entered a transitional phase and continues "as-is" relative to operations, administration, and management. During this phase it focuses on achieving additional objectives in the areas of expanding data coverage, upgrading data processing, marketing, management and administration. Key Words: Intelligent Transportation Systems, Advanced Traveler Information Systems, deployment, decision-oriented framework, TravInfo