Benefit and Cost Parameters of Intelligent Transportation Systems

Abstract

The Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Deployment Analysis System (IDAS) is a sketch planning analysis tool that can be used to estimate the impacts and costs resulting from the deployment of ITS components. The program includes default values for the parameters required to calculate ITS deployment costs and benefits. IDAS allows users to override the default values of ITS device cost and benefit parameters, including unit cost estimates, cost assumptions, benefit module parameters, ITS impacts, and impact dollar values. On one hand, the use of cost and benefit parameter values that better represent the region under consideration is expected to produce better assessments of ITS deployment alternatives. On the other hand, collection of regional ITS cost and benefit parameters could be expensive, and some required parameters might not be available for the region under consideration. For this reason, IDAS users tend to use many of the program's default values in their analyses. This paper reports on the results of a project that was initiated by the Florida Department of Transportation to identify Florida-specific cost and benefit parameters for use as inputs to IDAS ITS alternative assessments in Florida. The paper also compares the results obtained by using these derived parameters with the results obtained by using the national defaults when a real world ITS deployment project is being evaluated. The produced cost estimate for this deployment project is also compared with the actual cost of the project.