Why is a Regional ITS Architecture needed?

The Thurston Region ITS Architecture was developed in part to meet federal requirements for conformity with the National ITS Architecture and national ITS technical standards. The purpose of these federal requirements is to ensure that ITS projects will integrate with other ITS projects both within and across jurisdictions. Because transportation systems cross jurisdictional boundaries, coordinating these systems becomes paramount to success—they must work together. An outline of how to match resources, systems, and protocols is contained in this new  Regional ITS Architecture. Federal provisions in the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) require that ITS projects carried out using funds made available by the Highway Trust Fund (including the mass transit account) be in conformance with the National ITS Architecture and applicable standards. Thurston Regional Planning Council, in consultation with member agencies, has taken on the responsibility of maintaining the Regional ITS Architecture to ensure conformance for regional projects. The regional ITS architecture isn't just a federal requirement, though. TRPC also developed the architecture to ensure that limited taxpayer dollars in this region are spent as effectively as possible in development of this system. Groundwork laid in developing the architecture identified important new partnerships across the region, and opportunities to work together to maximize investments in the system. By bringing roads and transit professionals, emergency response providers, school bus professionals, communications specialists, and others together to develop the architecture, TRPC ensured that the many diverse, inter-related transportation needs of the community would be considered as part of this strategy. As new ITS initiatives are funded and developed, the regional ITS framework will ensure significant operational and cost efficiencies, and improved transportation system performance--the ultimate goal of these investments and efforts.

Advanced traffic surveillance and signal control systems have resulted in travel time improvements ranging from 8 to 25%.