NEW YORK, NY, November 26, 2008 - Last week, thousands of the world's leading transportation leaders, policy makers, and other industry professionals, gathered in New York City to experience the largest display of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) ever at the at the 15th World Congress on ITS. Innovators from the public and private sectors, representing more than 45 different countries, had one common goal for this year's Congress: to show the world that intelligent transportation systems have the ability to save lives, time, money, and improve the environment today.

The World Congress rotates every year between the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Scott Belcher, President and CEO, ITS America, Hermann Meyer, CEO, ERTICO (ITS Europe), Monica Sundström, Chairman, ERTICO (ITS Europe), and Daisaburo Terajima, President, ITS Japan, all agreed that there is an international outcry for improvements to our transportation systems.

According to the CEOs, "Intelligent Transportation Systems offer solutions to help prevent accidents, reduce congestion, lower costs, and reduce emissions."

"New York City serves as a good example for cities that suffer from a challenging and complex transportation system and offers the ideal setting for the demonstration of how these technologies can improve traffic conditions," the leaders said in a joint statement. "Cooperation is key to implement Intelligent Transport Systems. The ITS World Congress achieved further cooperation and is a milestone for success."

In order to prepare for this year's World Congress on ITS, two Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII) test beds were constructed - one on the west side of Manhattan and other along the Long Island Expressway - in which buses equipped with the latest ITS technologies demonstrated numerous applications including in-vehicle signing, warnings, traffic signal timing, traveler information, construction alerts, and e-commerce. In order to show that these technologies can be applied today, the World Congress Organizing Committee left these technologies in place for future research and development.

In addition to the test beds and with the assistance of local authorities, the World Congress cordoned off shut down five blocks of 11th Avenue to allow major automakers to showcase the latest in ITS safety applications. These applications enable cars to talk to roads and each other in order to prevent accidents before they happen to help reduce congestion and prevent back-ups.

The exhibition hall, which covered more than 350,000 square feet of the Javits Center and highlighted 240 exhibiting companies, featured a Transportation Management Center (TMC) of the Future. This TMC collected data from the streets of New York and showed how this information is beneficial to reducing congestion, generating travel data, signal timing, and road condition warnings.

The World Congress may be over but the impact it has left on transportation certainly will not. Next year, the World Congress will be held in Stockholm, Sweden, from September 21-25, 2009.