Often the authority paying for the capital cost of an application or the person paying to receive a service is not the only one, or indeed may not be the primary one, to receive a benefit or cost of the service. The clear establishment of a firm link between those who pay for a service and those who receive the benefit was emphasized. The meeting ended on a very positive note. Although many challenges were recognized, there were many solutions to these challenges. The move towards the information era is now established in all sectors of life.
Highways are no exception.
Therefore ITS professionals must channel our efforts into ensuring that we can guide highway engineers and design systems to achieve the maximum benefit for the large investments in ITS that are beginning to emerge around the world. We need to ensure that we do derive all the benefits that the integration of systems can provide by emphasizing the need to build systems within an overall architecture to achieve well established and clear goals. Let the private sector handle the development cost risk, but let the public sector handle the political and legislative risk would sum up the feeling of the participants in this area. ITS has much to offer. However it must not be oversold and the technicians need to listen to customers who must buy the product if it is to be a success.