US transportation 'needs political leadership'

Long-time industry leader John Worthington reflects on where transportation in the US is heading – and where it should be going. Interview with Jason Barnes.

The US’s new transportation bill reflects much of what is wrong in the sector in general and in ITS in particular, according to John Worthington. While a decision is welcome, he says, it does little more than provide certainty of funding for anything other than day-to-day operations.

Worthington, former Chairman and CEO of 139 Transcore, is back in the ITS industry after a five-year break. Tempted out of retirement to become CEO of traffic management specialist 5642 Trafficware, he sees much has changed but a lot remains worringly familiar.

Crumbs not cake

Among the latter is the small slice of the transportation funding pie which ITS habitually receives. Worthington is not looking to apportion blame for this state of affairs but notes that the relative size and fragmentation of the industry continues to make it difficult to effectively lobby for change and to make policy makers realise that ITS offers disproportionate gains from money spent.

He draws some distinct contrasts where progress in the public and private sides of ITS are concerned.

“We’ve seen some tremendous progress on the vehicular side in the last few years – self-parking applications, nav systems and in-vehicle interfaces for consumer electronics. We’re close to the self-driving car. But then other things have not changed. There’s been comparatively little progress on the infrastructure side of ITS.”

Archaic thinking

And if infrastructure developments are failing to keep up with computing and consumer electronics, it is because procurement processes have failed to evolve: “Technology is a lot more robust and we can do a lot more with far less. The archetypal big-screen command and control centres we used to think were necessary for traffic management, such as the solution which went into Atlanta for the ’96 Olympics, were once thought state of the art but are now archaic.

“A problem is the tendency to specify and buy technology which is years out of date by the time it’s implemented. We need to think more in terms of a performance-based procurement process, not one which specifies a system.”

An obstacle to that is the public sector’s aversion to risk. Proven models tend to be followed, especially those which generate positive press for politicians. The result is slow progress. Worthington says:
“Transportation is a strategic asset which needs a long-term vision and plan. I’m not especially a fan of large government but there are certain things which only the federal Government can accomplish: a comprehensive strategic plan for transportation with explicit means of funding is one of them. I’m convinced that ITS will get a bigger slice of the pie over time. Transportation infrastructure will become more intelligent. The challenge is how to make that transition happen more quickly.”

Conquering conservatism

Worthington describes the $800 billion spent on shovel-ready infrastructure projects as part of economic stimulus packages as “wasted”; if just 10% of that money had been spent on ITS the result would have been an eye-opening showcase of what technology can do, he says.

The opportunity was there to garner the attention requisite for substantial increases in ITS funding.

While for some a positive aspect of economic downturn is technological innovation, as suppliers look to add value and so make their products more capable and attractive, he regards many current specifications as being distinctly conservative.

“Unfortunately, in the government market for ITS we’re not getting dramatically smarter at using smart technology. It takes a few forward-thinking customers prepared to take a perceived risk or there will be no traction with new ideas and solutions. If customers are risk-averse then you have to play to your opportunities. I think we’re going to see evolutionary, not revolutionary developments.

“To address risk while stimulating innovation, we as an industry need more scale. At TransCore, we always had a certain amount of budget each year for developing one or two products or concepts that we knew were riskier. Smaller companies do not have that luxury – and a lot of ITS is comprised of smaller niche businesses; there are a lot of one-product companies out there.
The risk, of course, is that mass brings inertia. All too many small, agile and innovative companies lose those attributes if subsumed into a bigger whole. Worthington does not think that’s inevitable, however.

“I wouldn’t be back in the business if I didn’t believe there’s opportunity to create a really significant, market-driven ITS company.

A lot of the real big players in this sector grew out of the defence industry – a highly structured environment – and they remain rigid. One thing we tried to do at TransCore was foster entrepreneurial spirit. It’s a tough thing to do, but you have to empower people and organisationally foster them.”

Timing, he says, is crucial: “When things are rosy financially, some people will take risks but most aren’t going to really stretch. The bold might. In more difficult circumstances, you’ll find a lot of people just scraping to get by, let alone innovate. To me, that’s the time to be bold and explore relationships that will leverage resources and establish a broader platform for longer-term growth.”

Small changes big improvements

In some respects, being at the top of a large tolling system provider was a halcyon existence. Tolling generates its own revenues, but traffic management is different. Worthington has a whole new set of frustrations to address.

“Most members of the public would not think twice about updating the three-year-old PC at home,” he explains. “Yet if you look at the equipment managing a typical critical highway intersection or transportation corridor, likely as not the electronic devices are 10 to 20 years old. If we spent more money just to get things up to date, that would be a huge improvement.”

And if we’re failing to update the equipment, operations are no better: “Virtually anything built within a corridor will impact traffic flow, but signal timing is not being changed to optimise traffic flow – that’s before you get to thinking about replacing them with more modern adaptive control solutions. Some of the larger cities are more proactive, but it’s sporadic. Even in some bigger cities, the people who manage street lighting are also responsible for managing signals. That needs to change.”

Trouble at the top

Political leadership is needed. Adversarial politics – politicians from one side of the house voting down a good idea just because it was proposed by the opposition – has played a large part in getting us to the situation we’re in, Worthington says.

“Take that latest two-year transportation bill: it was a political football continually fumbled down the field and the result is like a tied game: neither side has won and we as spectators are left wanting much more. Both parties are to blame, as is the electorate. Polarisation has given us paralysis,” he says.

“We need politicians willing to be pragmatic and realising that not everything is going to go their way. Not too long ago, the Senate was civil, if not collegial. People realised that they had to do deals and give ground to get things done.

“People need to realise that good political deals are like good business deals: both sides should come away feeling like they’ve given just a little too much ground. We’re missing that at the moment.”