California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology

This paper poses two key questions regarding ATMIS implementation: how are ATMIS services successfully implemented?, in what circumstances are ATMIS strategies cost-effective? The authors attempt to find answers by examining case studies of twelve jurisdictions. The answers should help others judge where and how ATMIS should be implemented. The first section of the paper identifies the requirements for successful ATMIS implementation and operation based on the case study findings. The second describes a diffusion pattern found in the case studies. The final section concludes that more is known about how to implement ATMIS than about whether implementation will be cost-effective and suggests devoting more resources to evaluation. The first requirement for successful ATMIS implementation is a need for improved traffic management. Given this need, there must also be leadership to initiate and organize a project. This leadership is most often found at the staff level. The leaders must have information. Information is obtained from reading, contact with other transportation professionals, and from consultants, who generally participate at some point in the implementation process. Funding is also needed, and many combinations of sources of funding are possible. Given these basic requirements, community support, multi-agency cooperation, and technical resources can be generated. ATMIS is first implemented in large, congested cities, particularly those with frequent surges of traffic due to sports or entertainment events. Smaller, nearby cities, seeing the success of ATMIS in these cities, subsequently implement ATMIS. More evaluation of actual ATMIS implementation is needed to provide a basis for determining the circumstances in which ATMIS is likely to be cost-effective.