Chapter 32: Transportation Information Systems

The first transportation information system used by human beings was likely a series of tree notches or rock piles indicating direction of travel. With the development of written language, road signs would display instruction in words and numbers. As human civilization and technology advanced, transportation information systems progressed in tandem. In particular, the telegraph and then the telephone became key technologies in communicating transportation information.

In the late 20th century computers brought the information technology revolution. The earliest application of information technologies to surface transportation in the U.S.A. was the electronic route guidance system (ERGS), a federally funded developmental project of the 1970s. ERGS, employing computers, and drawing on systems engineering concepts developed for NASAs Project Apollo, was designed to monitor traffic flow in congested areas and then, when appropriate, to reroute vehicles to less congested routes. Work on ERGS had been stimulated by the oil crises of the 1970s, and when oil decontrol measures adopted by the Reagan administration in 1981 brought a sharp decline in oil prices, interest in ERGS waned.