1. INNOVATION
E
very time I take the airport
train in from Heathrow
into London’s Paddington
station I always pause at a
small statue placed not long
ago commemorating one of the modern
transport industry’s first, and still arguably
its greatest, innovators.
Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859)
was a designer and builder of both
equipment and supporting infrastructure
across multiple modes (bridges,
locomotives, railways, steamships, tunnels
and stations including Paddington itself)
there is no question that he was a great
innovator who pushed the boundaries of
technological development.
Just as importantly, as a true celebrity
of his day, his focus and drive achieved
the critical broadening of the public
perception necessary to support these
monumental projects that would influence
transport design around the world for
generations.
Indeed Brunel’s career even though it
ended in the middle of the 19th century
offers some useful lessons for the ITS
community over a century and a half
later. First and foremost of these was
the importance of keeping developments
within the boundaries of the state of
technology itself to reasonably support
innovative concepts as part of a unified
transport network rather than just a
“one off” experiment that could not be
duplicated to significantly enhance the
transportation network
LESSON LEARNED?
One of the last projects Brunel undertook
was the steamship Great Eastern which
undeniably fit this category. The Great
Eastern was by virtually all metrics
the largest ship of the 19th Century.
Representing Brunel’s forward thinking
in operations as well as design and
engineering, the ship was intended
to be part of (as we would say today)
an integrated fare media scheme for
seamless intermodal passenger service
in conjunction with the Great Western
Railway network (which he also designed).
Designed largely based on principles
of economies of scale and Brunel’s own
efficiency calculations, the iron hulled
steamer in an era still dominated largely
by wooden sailing vessels was without
question an innovation and a test platform
for maritime development.
When it was launched in 1860, with
Queen Victoria not yet halfway through
her reign and before the American
Civil War, it was simply too large for
the shipyard equipment, port facilities,
navigational systems and propulsion
systems of the time of the time to
adequately handle. From the start, the
ship’s construction was well over budget
and far behind schedule.
Once finally launched, Great Eastern
proceeded for several years to deliver
losses to a succession of owners
and investors and to remain largely
underutilised until, near the end of its
career, it was used to lay transoceanic
telegraph cables rather than its original
vision of carrying passengers. By that time
the ship had unfortunately long exceeded
its useful life expectancy, and was in fairly
short order broken up, this also a tedious
process owing to the extreme size of the
vessel.
The Great Eastern was replaced in time
by newer and more economical large ships
built for compatibility with the enhanced
infrastructure now available to support
such vessels. Today’s highly successful
mega cruise liners of course now operate
safely, efficiently and profitably worldwide,
often exceeding Great Eastern’s
An elegy to
lessons
learnedDavid E Pickeral looks at the current status of Integrated Corridor
Management Program in the US and hopes that it can avoid the
Great Eastern dilemma
Implementing any
major technology
change in transport
is an iterative,
evolutionary
process >>>

2. >>>
Integrated Corridor Management

3. ENFORCEMENT
22,500 tons by fourfold, proving that
Brunel’s economic concepts were quite
valid – it was just that technology hadn’t
caught up to his vision.
QUANTUM PHYSICS
In recalling Brunel’s experience it is
important that the ITS community
remain grounded in acknowledgement
of the current state of technological
development combined with an adherence
to industry standards. As was true 150
years ago, transportation planning,
funding and execution seldom move in
quantum jumps. Implementing any major
technology change in transport is an
iterative, evolutionary process.
It requires the buy-in of multiple
stakeholders and careful consideration
of and accounting for developments that
have come before and prior expenditures
of public and private resources that yet to
provide full return on investment. It may
also frequently require compromise for the
sake of standardisation or interoperability.
These concepts are likely familiar to
most readers of these pages. For many
years, and indeed still in the perception of
some, ITS was viewed as more the stuff of
science fiction than practical reality.
Now with a solid record of
implementation across tolling, parking,
congestion management, integrated
fare media and traffic flow systems
worldwide, and the support of mainline
government programmes such as VII,
CVIS, IntelliDrive and eCall, there is no
longer any question of the viability of truly
smarter transportation going forward.
To continue this forward momentum
however requires recognition of the
maturity of the transport ecosystem to
create actionable change, and to focus
immediate and near-term resources where
they will have the most positive return on
invesment.
In so doing, it is of equal importance
to avoid the next Great Eastern or broad
gauge refit of our era. or perhaps even
more appropriately defer them for
consideration and implementation by
future generations.
RIDING THE RAPIDS
One of the most prominent of these in our
time comes in the area of Personal Rapid
Transit (PRT), a commendably forward
thinking concept in providing ecologically
sustainable development for our urban
centres and beyond. In this century, it is
likely that PRT, or something very much
like it, will revolutionise the way our
children and grandchildren commute,
live and work in the urban environment,
bridging the gap between private vehicles
and mass transit.
However when applying the lens of
critical examination based on the current
state of technology, available funding and
political landscape, it is by all objective
metrics not a realistic undertaking for
this decade because it requires replacing
or duplicating many transportation
assets now in use with a completely new
dedicated system, business model, and
ridership base.
While the transportation industry is
moving towards standardisation, the use
of proprietary niche technologies remains
widespread. These can limit competition
in the market, restrict the availability of
essential data from and between systems,
and, like Brunel’s rail lines, ultimately
necessitate an expensive rip-out-and-
replace fix to achieve the serviceability and
compatibility required.
We have a huge opportunity in ITS
today to simplify some of the complexity
that exists in the field by combining
the latest innovations with the existing
technology being used today
The priorities for smarter transport
Even when new capital expenditures are
required, intelligence can be blended in
from the start as part of an interoperable
transport ecosystem
HOT Lanes are the most widely known platforms for Integrated Corridor Management schemes
in the United States

4. development should reflect the technology
and economic realities of today and be
designed around the optimisation of
existing infrastructure and knowledge
base not the creation of total replacement
systems. Prime examples of this type
of thinking are evident in the area of
managed motorways in the UK and
Integrated Corridor Management (ICM)
in the US.
The concept behind both initiatives is
elegantly simple – leveraging established
rights of way and infrastructure to provide
multi-dimensional usage within the same
mode or in multi-modal environments.
The overlay of infrastructure required to
accomplish much of this is a small fraction
of the cost - of building and adding
new lanes and heavy rail or tramlines.
Even when new capital expenditures are
required, intelligence can be blended in
from the start as part of an interoperable
transport ecosystem rather than being
added piecemeal later.
Moreover, utilising the shoulder lanes
for travel as part of a managed motorway
scheme could be the foundation for an
overall integrated traffic management
scheme combining flexible lane usage with
integrated traveller information systems
(TIS), with the monitoring and control
infrastructure both directing traffic flow
and feeding probe data back into the
system in real time.
A FARE ARGUMENT
In the area of transit management, there is
a growing trend to develop multi-modal
integrated fare media (IFM) solutions
that allow a greater range of choices and
convenience for users. In a matter of
years, new open payments architectures
are a virtual certainty.
Thin client environments that eliminate
fare media entirely are already beginning
to replace slow, expensive manual
cash collection and accounting and
even outdated early generation stored
value automated fare collection (AFC)
systems. This lets travellers use near
field communication (NFC) cans with
their standard credit cards or optical
scan or radiofrequency communication
identification (RFID) to sweep on and off
of mass transit.
Combined with the standardisation
already inherent in both the ICT and
financial services industry, transit
passengers have instant, transparent access
to transport services in their home city
or whilst travelling to a different one - all
using basically the same vehicles and
operational equipment, thus ensuring
that public and/or private investment in
these investments is not lost for the sake of
progress.
In Brunel’s era, steam (whether
on land or on sea) was the basis for
transport innovation. In the 20th
Century, the internal combustion engine
ensured progress on land, sea and air.
In the coming decades with numerous
solutions likely necessary to provide
clean, renewable sustainable power,
developments will be dominated not so
much by the sources or consumers of
power so much as the ability to collect,
manage and analyze the informational
content generated by and them.
The 21st Century is truly the Century of
Data.
Integrated Corridor Management
DavidEPickeralisGlobalDevelopment
ExecutiveforITSSolutionsatIBM,basedin
Washington,DC
depciker@us.ibm.com
www.linkedin.com/in/pickeral
Forpreviouslypublishedarticlesonthis
subjectvisitourwebsiteandclickonthe
MANAGEDMOTORWAYSsupplement
fyi