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By:  Larry Ives

Kokomo has been known for some time as ‘stop-light city’. Aside from being the principal north-south corridor for north-central Indiana, the US 31 corridor is the prime location for commercial and industrial development in Kokomo. This situation has led to serious congestion at certain intersections and, for through traffic, an average corridor speed that is one-half that of any other similar road segment on US 31N.

Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) is a comprehensive and coordinated effort to maximize the efficiencies of the road system while minimizing the impacts of traffic accidents, road construction and special events on ITS corridors. For Kokomo, our involvement began when the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT) chose us as one of the first communities in Indiana to utilize ITS for a non-interstate corridor, US 31.

Our primary contact for ITS issues at INDOT is Mark Newland. Mark took the lead in coordinating the involvement of INDOT and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) personnel and resources. His group produced the ‘white paper’ which set out the ITS options that INDOT felt would be most appropriate. Those options included:

Incident Response Work Group – includes representatives from local emergency services, local support services and INDOT. This group is tasked with improving communications, coordinating work procedures and other issues identified to speed up incident clearance.

Dynamic Message Signs – located at the north and south ends of the corridor. The local 911-dispatch center is connected to the INDOT ITS operations center in Indianapolis. Provides motorists with advance notification of incidents.

Electronic Traffic Monitoring – Fiber-optic cables and video cameras will be spaced along the corridor to provide thorough coverage. The video and data feeds are shared with state and local dispatch centers. This coordination expedites both local and state emergency response and reduces time that lanes are closed.

Two-Tenths Mile Markers – located along the corridor to help motorist and emergency vehicles locate incidents more efficiently.

Regional Plotting of the ITS National Architecture – This is software developed by the FHWA for use by local authorities to assure ITS project compatibility and integration. The Incident Response Work Group and its members are the primary source of data for local input to the regional architecture.

This list begins and ends with the Incident Response Work Group, so should your to-do list for development of any ITS projects. Members of the Work Group represent the multi-jurisdictional agencies whose personnel are responsible for incident clearance and congestion mitigation. The level of cooperation and motivation of the members of the Work Group will set the limit to the IQ of the intelligence of your ITS projects. Our office was fortunate to have our Director’s experience with local incident responders. This led to our Work Group having the right people and credibility.

As a result of the input from our Work Group, we developed our draft and eventual Regional Architecture for our area.  We have recently submitted our Regional Architecture to INDOT and FHWA for review. Copies of our architecture are available. We are currently anticipating a July 2004 letting of INDOT projects including fiber optics, video cameras and automatic signal interrupters for emergency vehicles.