new technologies that provide drivers with real-time information, such as transit routes and schedules providing information about delays due to congestion, accidents, weather conditions, or road repair work as well as a range of new devices such as computerized adaptive traffic signals that help to fully integrated intelligent transportation systems, tying vehicles, passengers, and devices together. If the United States were to adopt ITS, sitting in traffic at toll plazas, missing trains, unknowingly driving into dangerous conditions, and other pitfalls of getting around today will become ever rarer occurrences.

Not only are most of these benefits better for the environment, they also help the economy. Specifically, the ITIF calculates that having a robuts ITS in place could "contribute significantly to reducing congestion, which costs U.S. commuters 4.2 billion hours and 2.8 billion gallons of fuel each year, costing the U.S. economy up to $200 billion per year." The ITIF called for an increase in federal ITS funding by $2.5 to $3 billion a year, and estimates that the money will be easily returned in economic benefits. For examplt:

If the United States were to implement a national real-time traffic information program, the GAO estimates the present value cost of establishing and operating the program would be $1.2 billion, but would deliver present value benefits of $30.2 billion, a 25 to 1 benefit-cost ratio.

We get it. Ads can be annoying. But ads are also how we keep the garage doors open and the lights on here at Autoblog - and keep our stories free for you and for everyone. And free is good, right? If you'd be so kind as to whitelist our site, we promise to keep bringing you great content. Thanks for that. And thanks for reading Autoblog.

Here's how to disable adblocking on our site.

Click on the icon for your Adblocker in your browser. A drop down menu will appear.

Select the option to run ads for autoblog.com, by clicking either "turn off for this site", "don't run on pages on this domain", "whitelist this site" or similar. The exact text will differ depending on the actual application you have running.