Martin Leak recently attended the Intelligent Transport Systems World Congress. He is personally very interested and excited by the direction ITS is taking and the leaps it has made in the last few years.

The theme of this year’s Congress was, ‘Reinventing transportation in our connected world,’ and the conference supported the theme by having a wide range of technologies on display including connected and autonomous vehicles, electric vehicles, robotics, sensor technology, and real-time weather and road conditions data analysis.

Appropriately, many sessions focussed on the challenges of adopting ITS, such as technical, human and legislative factors, and the need for accurate and complex data sharing. Its application for freight and public transportation was also examined, as well as safety issues, sustainability and traffic management.

The conference made clear that we are on the cusp of a transformation, where technology offers realistic solutions to our global mobility, safety, and environmental challenges. However, technologies alone won’t bring about solutions. We need to take an integrated approach, combining state of the art technologies with social innovations. We need coordinated interaction between people and technologies, bringing synergy between modes of transport to offer mobility in a way that is environmentally friendly, safe and efficient. It’s an exciting time to be in the industry, but a time of great responsibility also, as we put in place the fundamental methodologies and infrastructure from which these technologies will be deployed.