No abstract

Intelligent Transport Systems work with information and control technologies which provide the core of ITS functions. Some of these technologies, like loop detectors, are well known to transportation professionals. However, there are a number of less familiar technologies and system concepts that are the key to ITS functions. The technical core of ITS is information and control technologies, but human factors are also vitally important, and potentially very complex. This paper introduces the main ITS enabling technologies and explains why transport professionals should involve human factor experts at an early stage of design of ITS equipment and facilities.

Following the measures foreseen in the Transport White Paper 2001, situation of road safety has improved. Road fatalities have declined by more than 17 % since 2001 in the EU. However, with around 41 600 deaths and more than 1.7 million injured in 2005, road remains the least safe mode of transport and objectives to halve the number of fatalities on road by 2010 is most likely not feasible to achieve. Therefore a need for the intelligent vehicle safety systems, that enable to raise the level of road safety, is much higher than ever before. The Intelligent Vehicle Safety Systems ensure a superior safety on road would it be vehicle‐based or infrastructure‐related systems. These can be divided into passive and active safety applications where the former help people stay alive and uninjured in a crash, while the latter help drivers to avoid accidents. Some of the most promising (e‐call) and the most used (ABS, ESP) systems are analised more specifically in the paper. Possible solutions to deploying intelligent transport systems in Lithuania are also introduced.

The improvement of transportation systems and technologic equipment leads to changing technical capabilities of this equipment. With the development of technologies, industrial development is also inevitable, resulting in correspondingly increasing need of transportation of HeavyWeight and OverSize (HW/OS) cargo. The application of a systematic approach in HW/OS cargo transportation processes allows reducing costs of delivery of such a cargo several times, which leads to a dramatic change of economic development and investment attraction conditions. Thus creating a system of criteria for the selection and assessment of HW/OS routes, which would allow selecting the most appropriate route of transportation in terms of cost and time, is expedient for this reason. The algorithm for the assessment of HW/OS cargo transportation routes will be drawn up in this article. This algorithm enables an objective evaluation of HW/OS transportation processes comparing different modes of transport, route segments, cargo transportation and cargo handling technology, and it can be practically applied to any territory.

Dynamically changing economic conditions influence the growing demand of various freights transportation. Inevitably, the demand for heavy and oversized freight transportation is increasing, which is quite problematic. In many cases, it is very difficult to standardize the technology of heavy and oversized freight transportation. Decisions are necessary, which would allow to deliver heavy or oversized freight to the destination place, allocating fewer funds as possible for infrastructure improvements, choosing the most appropriate mode of transport for such freight transportation or using advantages of multimodal (combined) transport. In this article there will be selected methodology of heavy and oversized freight transportation system, carrying heavy and oversized freight by road transport. There will also be made an approval of this methodology, based on a hypothetical route within Lithuanian territory.