Transportation

Why CoUnTrIes are leaders and Why The UnITed sTaTes Is BehInd
Both policy and non-policy factors explain country leadership in intelligent transportation systems. This section assesses the non-policy and then the policy fac- tors explaining country leadership in ITS.


non-Transportation policy factors
geography and economic growth
In Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, increased transportation demand coupled with a limited ability to expand physical supply has driven these countries to adopt intelligent transportation solutions. These countries’ highly constrained geographies, including the lack of land and steep terrain, severely constrict the construction of new roadway capacity and forced politicians and policymakers alike to recognize at an early stage that they had no choice but to maximize the

efficiency of their installed highway capacity.¹⁵⁵ Japan’s transportation agencies also face highly concentrated and restrictive land use policies, furthering the impe- tus towards ITS.¹⁵⁶

South Korea faced a related dynamic, when its explo- sive economic growth from the 1990s to mid-2000s led to dramatic growth in automobile ownership and traffic that overwhelmed the country’s ability to build new highway capacity, leaving it little alternative but to turn to intelligent transportation systems to extract the maximum capacity out of its existing roadways (and the new ones it was feverishly building).¹⁵⁷