The European Parliament has voted to adopt a proposal on EU wide deployment of Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) which will bring many new aspects to road travel under EU control. The vote represents a shift in direction in ITS which had previously been left to voluntary cooperation between member states and industry.

The adoption of the directive will, it is hoped, prevent serious traffic jams through the use of an EU wide real-time traffic information system. Hailing the vote as a victory for greener and more efficient transport, Dieter-Lebrecht Koch MEP, Shadow Rapporteur on the ITS, declared that “a new age of transport has begun”.

ITS covers a broad range of technologies that serve to allow users to get detailed and real time information about road and traffic conditions as well as information about other modes of transport which its supporters claim will increase efficiency in transport as well as decrease carbon emissions. With access to this information it is hoped that consumers will be able to make more informed choices about how they get from A to B. For example, ITS could allow someone preparing to leave for work decide whether the bus, train or their car will get them there fastest and with the least amount of hassle.

Perhaps the most interesting use of ITS however, is the fledgling e-call initiative. e-call is a system that enables cars to automatically call emergency services should they detect that they have been involved in a serious accident, cutting down on response time and potentially saving lives. Systems like this are already in use in countries like the United States, however, the challenge in the European Union is the lack of an EU wide emergency number, preventing the system from working across national borders. Indeed the EU cited the fact that, in their view, the voluntary approach to ITS standardisation had not worked and that it was now time for the EU to step in.

The EU is stepping in at a time when millions of euros have already been invested in ITS as part of the failed voluntary implementation mentioned by the commission. As a result, Rui Dias Camolino, Chairman of the ASECAP (European association of toll road operators) Technical Committee on ITS, welcomed the commission's stipulation that the planned ITS implementations must be backwards compatible with existing systems.

The vote should sit well with Mathieu Grosch MEP who’s report on the future of European transport was also adopted in the same session. Grosch’s report calls for, among other things, measures to combat bottlenecks in and around cities as well as a more efficient interface between various modes of transport across the EU, something which proponents of ITS promise it can deliver.