The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT)’s strategic plan for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) revolves around attaining and demonstrating key mobility, safety, productivity, energy and environment, and customer satisfaction benefits at a reasonable and sustainable level of investment. As of 2013, MDOT operates and maintains over 800 ITS devices on over 500 miles of highways. The research team was tasked with evaluating the return on investment of the newest major ITS construction projects, which have introduced a large number of new applications and devices. The evaluation entailed collecting data from the different traffic operations centers (TOCs), surveying the public, and analysis through the application of statistical modeling, microsimulation, and a tiered cost-benefit analysis.

Costs

The average operations and maintenance (O&M) costs for ITS devices (DMS, CCTV, vehicle detectors, and travel time signs) in Michigan dropped from $14,160 per device in 2007 to $8,893 in 2013.

Areas with a higher density of ITS devices have lower average O&M costs than areas with fewer devices, this is supported by the difference in O&M costs between the urban and more rural areas covered by the traffic operations centers.