Institute of Transportation Engineers. ITE Journal: Theodore M. Matson Memorial Award: Bringing the

Theodore M. Matson contributed greatly to the traveling public through the advancement of traffic engineering and the training of professionals. Mr. Matson was director of the Bureau of Highway Traffic at Yale University and was serving as vice president of ITE when his untimely death occurred in December 1954. He was one of ITE's founders.

The Theodore M. Matson Memorial Award, in recognition of outstanding contributions in the field of traffic engineering, has been awarded annually since 1957. Each year, representatives from the following associations select the award recipient:

* American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials;

* American Road and Transportation Builders Association;

* Federal Highway Administration;

* Institute of Transportation Engineers;

* Intelligent Transportation Society of America;

* Theodore M. Matson Associates; and

* Transportation Research Board.

THERE IS PROGRESS IN OUR profession, although it occurs at a frustratingly modest rate consistent with the scale of the facilities. You have to be in the field for a long time to see it. The important change today is the transition from a "transportation" sector-creating infrastructure-to a "mobility" sector-providing service.

This change has taken a long time. It reflects a new mix of constraints and opportunities: the constraints on expanding systems (resources and context) and the opportunities to manage them better (information and performance). Operating and managing transportation systems is not entirely new; it has long been a focus of ITE and is now front and center in the overall transportation activity landscape.

A PERSONAL NOTE

This honor provides the unique-and seductive-opportunity to offer personal professional observations on the intersection of my career with the evolution of the transportation engineering profession. Because I was trained as a historian before studying urban design and transportation, I have found it interesting to look at the big picture.

During the first 35 years of my career, I have evolved from infrastructure designer to transportation planner to mobility policy strategist. Perhaps it is because I did not enter transportation from a traditional civil or traffic background that it has been easier for me to move along with the crest of new waves-and even to churn up a few of my own. Combining retrospect with prospect, I perceive three principal vectors.

THE END OF THE "BUILD" ERA

I entered the field of transportation planning/engineering in the late 1960s-at the height of urban interstate construction controversies. I joined the Voorhees firm, bringing what is now called "context sensitivity" to large urban projects. The notion of interdisciplinary design concept teams of engineers, architects, landscape architects, urban ecologies and sociologists was new.

I was part of several efforts to tackle major urban highway construction controversies, moving around the United States with the big studies of the late 1960s and early 1970s to cities including Philadelphia, PA; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Cincinnati, OH; New Orleans, LA; and Dallas, TX.

These efforts sometimes (appropriately) produced "no builds." Those that were successfully implemented demonstrated lessons that are relevant today, such as the value of escaping the rigidities of engineering handbooks and the reluctance to invest in context compatibility. Successful projects always require strong civic leadership and an authorizing environment to support the non-standard approaches that make them work.

Maybe today-25 years later-as we move into the era of reconstructing aging urban facilities, we need to revisit the design concept team approach.

Systems Planning Dead End

I spent much of the 1970s catching the tail end of the 3-C planning process. Long-range regional systems planning-still focused on new capacity and the Magic Land of 2025-had difficulty adapting to the broader palette of congestion management and air quality strategies that were becoming increasingly relevant. The planning process seemed to be caught up in an endless spiral of abstract 25-year horizons and arcane environmental analyses without a serious focus on transportation.

Meanwhile, real-world planners gradually were coming to understand that you can build your way out of some kinds of congestion, but new capacity cannot be the central strategy for maintaining and improving urban mobility. We were realizing that the profession needed a broader range of viable and effective solutions not easily achievable in a rigid and outmoded federal aid program framework.

A Personal Note

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, ttansportation systems management and congestion management systems were not really viable career options. I spent a considerable period of time overseas on a set of fascinating projects in West Africa (a new capital for Nigeria) and South East Asia (new towns). Then, during the mid-1980s, notoriety grew for advocating changes in the federal aid program. This resulted in an invitation to Washington, DC, USA, to staff Transportation 2020, a coalition of public interest groups.

Transportation 2020 was established to consolidate the best thinking of the 1980s into a consensus proposal to reform the federal aid transportation program. Its core proposals were adopted as a common reauthorization legislative agenda by ITE, the Highway Users Federation for Safety and Mobility, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), the American Public Transportation Association and others.

As a result, I was asked to join the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), where I had the opportunity to participate in adapting much of the 2020 thinking into legislation. The Intermodal Surface Transportation and Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA) was the second greatest piece of 20th-century federal aid legislation.

ISTEA AND ITS

ISTEA set a new agenda for the 21st-century surface transportation program, providing a framework that is flexible, participatory and open to innovations in technology, finance and institutions. Meanwhile, a group of energetic industry leaders formed Mobility 2000, capitalizing on the technology thrust of ISTEA to promote intelligent transportation systems (ITS) combining new technology, advanced traffic operations and systems engineering approaches into concepts of operations designed to maximize the efficiency of existing networks.

In the decade since then, we have enlarged the focus of ITS gradually across an array of systems and technologies in support of specific user services-such as freeway, arterial, transit, rural and commercial vehicles. This ITS focus has led us to recognize important operational realities, including the heavy price paid in delays due to incidents, weather and construction disruption.

We also have learned that, by itself, modest deployment of ITS technology has limited payoffs unless we more fully capitalize on its monitoring, control and communication capabilities. The major payoffs lie with more aggressive applications such as ramp, lane and speed control, traffic responsive regimes and automated enforcement-all of which introduce their own tough implementation issues.

Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems-Back to the Future

The marriage of the infrastructure/ vehicle/logistics system we call surface transportation has yet to be consummated, but another major step is visible on the horizon, consistent with the original vision of Mobility 2000. A level of technological and market maturity has been achieved. It is capable of bringing the "intelligent vehicle" together with the "highway systems"-with dramatic safety and capacity potential.

A new dialog between the private vehicle/electronics sectors and state and federal highway interests could lead to the long-sought vehicle-to-roadside information exchange and a raft of new services. At the same time, the increased interest in demand management, including pricing and premium services, is beginning to fill out the palette of strategies with which to attack congestion, delay and unreliability.

My colleagues at Parsons Brinckerhoff and their competitors are gambling that all of this adds up to serious business.

A Personal Note

I believe our thinking in ITS, intelligent vehicle highway systems (IVHS) and systems operations and management is too timid for the long run. More aggressive ITS approaches-already visible in Europe-suggest a potential for real-time management that recaptures much of the delay lost to incidents and provides reliably "managed congestion." IVHS can introduce additional safety, capacity and service benefits.

As a profession, we need a vision of the future, just as other professions have their visions (visions, for example, of improved health or more ubiquitous communications). Perhaps back-casting from a more ideal transportation future can boost our short-term horizon.

TOWARD A NEW INSTITUTIONAL ARCHITECTURE

Realizing the promise of new technology and systems management is not possible within the inherited framework of a culture and institutions designed for public works projects. We are beginning to face a reality, which is well understood in other sectors, that technology alone does not generate substantial changes in performance. It simply automates things we are doing already.

The productivity payoff from the introduction of personal computers did not occur until more than a decade later-until business practices changed to capitalize on leveraging data management, word processing, file sharing and the World Wide Web and until the workforce was re-oriented and organized to capitalize on these capacities.

It is the same with ITS. For example, advances in detection/surveillance technology are wasted if the practices of departments of transportation and public safety entities do not capitalize on the available reductions in incident response time. The full impact of technology is achieved only when it is embedded in new service concepts and organizational arrangements that respond to the potential for substantially increased performance.

The "Big Shift"

Today, ITS and systems management and operations are still submerged within mid-20th-century institutions, as fragmented activities taking place within agencies preoccupied with construction and maintenance. Capitalizing on the potential of ITS/IVHS requires a radical transformation in this institutional setting at the policy, strategy and tactical level.

New organizational structure and new roles and relationships are needed to fully leverage the technology in public and private sector transportation entities. A workforce must be trained to be both service oriented and technologically sophisticated. These transitions must be part of a profound change in mission-or Big Shift, as it is called in Europe-from a strategic preoccupation with capacity construction to proactive systems operations and management.

The Promise

The threads of these changes are beginning to emerge among bellwether state and local governments and at the federal level. New federal policy is mainstreaming systems operations and management. State departments of transportation are reorganizing to improve accountability for operational activities. Transportation management centers are coalescing key players at the regional level and new dialogs are taking place across jurisdictional and sectoral lines. A new generation of professionals is emerging, less wedded to the traditional way of doing things.

While the necessary evolutionary padi is not entirely clear, the first draft outline of a new institutional architecture is emerging. Persuading decision-makers to undertake the evolution will be the most challenging task for professional leadership.

A Personal End Note

If you are a believer in progress, you must believe that some mix of these three vectors will be realized in a fashion that will improve transportation for the Magic Land of 2025. However, the challenge for today is to unleash this promise into contemporary reality-to find the right blend of technology, concept and institutional arrangements to bring that future forward faster.

Fortunately, at this time of needed change, there is vigorous leadership at ITE, MSHTO, FHWA, the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, the Transportation Research Board and with other stakeholders. ITE, in particular, has a key role to play as the focus of professionals from a variety of institutional positions. The potential for major contributions should excite young professionals.

STEPHEN C. LOCKWOOD has played a pivotal role in the development of transportation policy and programs in the United States for more than 30 years. He has helped direct attention to frame emerging issues and provoked debate with innovative approaches to issues.

His focus over a varied career has included integrating freeways into urban settings, developing country planning and federal and state policy and programs. His skill set includes the ability to integrate multiple perspectives garnered through applications projects, networking and research into coherent recommendations. He has applied his uncanny communications skills effectively as an insightful writer and a frequent speaker.

Steve arrived in Washington, DC, nearly two decades ago directing a coalition of interests focusing on new transportation policy. He followed this initiative as head of policy for FHWA, chairing the administrations ISTEA Task Force. As a consultant, he has pursued his strong interest in ITS and improved operations and performance of highway systems through studies, research and planning projects.

His counsel and services have been sought by federal, state and local agencies and by educational, scientific and trade associations. He is one of the most published transportation professionals on a variety of topics and in myriad publications.

Steve served as the vice chair of the Steering Committee of the National Dialog on Operations. His innovative thinking and writings on these topics helped increase the understanding of the benefits that can be derived through a more proactive operation and management of the U.S. transportation system. He helped envision and implement the administrative and organizational changes necessary to mainstream management and operations toward a more reliable and safe transportation system.

He has a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in architecture from Harvard University, followed by a master of city planning in urban design and transportation studies from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of ITE.