This study examined the capacity of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) to reduce energy consumption in the transportation sector. Research included a literature review focused on the energy-saving capacity of ITS technologies and interviews with ITS stakeholders and transportation experts and practitioners. A case study of an ITS project in Portland, Oregon, was used to illustrate the challenges and the opportunities associated with implementing ITS technologies. The objective of this study was to document the state of knowledge and practice and to create a resource for action and implementation of ITS technologies with energy savings as a goal. There is a lack of empirical evidence to substantiate the capacity of ITS to reduce energy consumption in the transportation sector. However, research indicates that the use of ITS has contributed to reductions in vehicular delay but further benefits may be limited. In contrast, ITS does have the potential to reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT), with significant benefits, although the benefits are uncertain. The shortage of empirical evidence of ITS benefits may be a function of the limited interest in the energy and environmental benefits of ITS compared with the interest in congestion and safety. In the ITS industry, the focus is on the connected vehicle initiative and, more broadly, the many opportunities to integrate and to leverage multiple ITS applications. There are opportunities to deploy ITS technologies with the purpose of reducing energy consumption in the transportation sector, to document any gains, and to address the lack of evidence supporting the energy-reducing capacity of ITS.

This paper describes a successful initiative in Portland, Oregon, to develop a web-based archive for geospatial transit performance data. The transit industry collects vast quantities of performance data. Archived data user services have evolved, but there is an absence of comparable (online, public, interactive) data archives for transit. In response to a request from the Tri-County Metropolitan Transit District of Oregon, which sought help with spatial visualization of its performance data, a team at Portland State University used a combination of open-and closed-source software to create a network layer on which stop-and segment-based performance measures could be displayed. The team then created a webbased application that allows individual users to run custom queries as well as to run other functions. The primary outcome was an increased understanding of transit operations that better informs high-level decision making. The secondary outcome was a multimodal data archive that benefits the research community. Future work will focus on upgrading the flow of data from quarterly to real time, which will require considerable work in the management of data quality. The methods by which the team visualized agency performance data and provided web-based access are replicable by other transit properties, particularly those with general transit feed specification data.