Review of Perspectives on Intelligent Transportation Systems by Joseph M. Sussman: Springer, New York, 2005. 232 pp.

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) have captured the imagination of the transportation community for nearly 20 years. The promise of applying cutting edge information technologies to address the significant surface transportation challenges of society has proven to be compelling to engineers, planners, and policy makers. Of course, with this promise has also come a large amount of hype. A key challenge to transportation professionals as they seek to advance ITS and, in doing so, improve surface transportation, is to go beyond the hype to understand the fundamentals associated with operating complex, large-scale transportation systems. Who better to guide one in this endeavor than Joseph Sussman, a distinguished transportation professional who has been heavily involved in ITS since its inception in the mid-1980s?

In his new book, Perspectives on Intelligent Transportation Systems, Dr. Sussman provides a fascinating historical perspective on the development and deployment of ITS. This book is not a technical reference. In fact, there is very little information provided in the book regarding the “bits and bytes” of transportation management or traveler information. Rather, the focus of the book is on the essential organizational, management, and human aspects that underpin ITS. The book is comprised of a series of articles and papers that Dr. Sussman has written between the years 1995–2004. While a reader may initially find this problematic, the inclusion of articles from the mid-90s are, in fact, very beneficial for the following reasons. First, they provide important insight into the intentions behind the creation of the ITS program in the United States. Second, the articles also clearly illustrate how much has changed (both technically and institutionally) in this relatively short period of time. For example, Dr. Sussman points out that at the time the original ITS Strategic Plan was written, neither the Internet nor the cell phone had become ubiquitous in American culture. Now, one could not imagine ITS (or daily life) without these technologies.

The book is organized in five sections. The first section provides an introduction to ITS. It begins with a description of major ITS functional areas (the “traditional” alphabet soup of ATMS, ATIS, AVCS, APTS, CVO, and ARTS). In addition, it provides a very strong background on institutional issues surrounding the development and deployment of ITS. While some of the technical terminology of this section is somewhat outdated, it does serve as a strong foundation for the reader to enable a more in-depth discussion of organizational issues in subsequent chapters.

The second section, ITS Organizational Issues, is excellent. The focus of this section is on regional operations of the surface transportation system. As Sussman notes, “this change to an operations mission at a regional scale requires new approaches in technology, systems, and institutions.” In particular, the discussion of the “3F/3I/1R” (i.e., funded, flexible, focused, integrated, intermodal, information-based, and regional) needs for successful operations provides a concise, easily understood set of principles to use in navigating the complex challenges of operating regional ITS systems.

The third section addresses the implications of ITS for educating transportation professionals. As an educator myself, I read the articles of this section when they were originally published in the 1990s and found the content to be extremely useful as I began my career. In particular, Sussman’s discussion of the “T-shaped” transportation professional (one with breadth in transportation fundamentals and depth in a particular transportation specialty) is enlightening.

The fourth section is made up of fourteen short (2–4 page) articles that Dr. Sussman wrote for ITS America’s publication ITS Quarterly between 1996 and 2000. This section is interesting in that it raises a wide variety of ITS issues, ranging from the potential of ITS to decrease safety to the role of ITS in developing countries.

Finally, the last section contains articles from 2002 and 2004 that provide a description of the current state of ITS and the challenges of the future. The section includes a very good, concise description of the fundamental technologies and functions of “modern” ITS. In addition, the final article, which provides a retrospective on the 1992 ITS Strategic Plan, is fascinating—clearly illustrating the challenges associated with developing and deploying technology-based systems in a world where technology and the needs of society change rapidly.

In summary, Perspectives on Intelligent Transportation Systems represents an important contribution to the existing set of books on ITS. While other ITS books deal exclusively with the technical and analytical aspects of the field, Sussman’s book fills a void by addressing the important organizational challenges of ITS. This book should be required reading for those entering the field of ITS to provide the context necessary to make the most of the potential provided by technology.