The base of the city's system is TITOS, which is an open telematics platform through which congress participants will have direct access to the 5T System—the integration of traffic control and management within the city, which is said to be the most advanced in Europe. It is the implementation of the 5T System that sparked Turin's selection as host to the 7th World Congress on ITS. The Congress is an event dedicated to the management and planning of mobility through telematics technologies and is organized by ERTICO, the European public/private partnership set up in 1991 by the European Commission, national governments, and leading European industrialists, to promote and implement Intelligent Transportation Systems. After the congress, the TITOS platform will be a permanent test bed for ITS devices and technologies designed and implemented in the future.

Regarding the potential of such intelligent control systems, 6000 people die every year on Italian roads, with incalculable human and social costs. Data from ITS experiments that have been carried out to date have shown promise. The DRIVE program (Dedicated Road Infrastructured for Vehicle Safety in Europe) promoted by the European Commission has, for example, verified that variable message panels, one of the simplest ITS tools in Europe, have convinced drivers on average to reduce their speed by 10%, causing a 30% reduction in accident numbers and a 40% reduction in road deaths. The same system has also allowed time lost due to congestion to be reduced by 20% and pollution by 5-10%.

According to ERTICO, it is possible that the widespread diffusion of such systems would cause the number of accidents to drop by 50% over time, while an onboard device that calls for emergency services automatically in an accident would increase survival rates by 15%. Unfortunately, ITS systems on the road are not yet very widespread in Europe. In Italy, the RDS-TMC (Traffic Message Channel), which enables drivers to receive messages about the state of traffic and roads via a specially equipped car radio, is of interest. However, the RAI broadcasting company only broadcasts signals for Piedmont, the Aosta Valley, Liguria, Lombardy, Veneto, and Friuli-Venezia-Giulia. Likewise, the first steps are only now being taken in the field of ITS onboard vehicles. In particular, the intelligent cruise control (ICC) systems would adapt well to Italian roads. These systems not only maintain the set speed, but also help the driver to adapt it to the characteristics of the route.

Kevin Jost

AEI September 2000