Impact of the California Oregon Advanced Transportation Systems

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California Oregon Advanced Transportation Systems (COATS)

Map of COATS Project Area, northern California and southern Oregon

Partnership, Technology, Research, Education

Since 1998, demonstrating and evaluating Intelligent Transportation Systems in rural environments.


THE VISION

Promoting innovative partnerships, technologies, and educational opportunities to facilitate and enhance safe, seamless rural travel throughout the western United States.

Before the WSRTC, there was COATS. The California Oregon Advanced Transportation Systems (COATS) established regional public and private sector cooperation to investigate and address rural concerns with advanced transportation technologies. This effort, dating back to 1998, has identified regional challenges, as well as developed and evaluated solutions to these throughout the northern California and southern Oregon region. It has served as the impetus for long-term partnerships, established a forum for discussion and information dissemination, and provided an incubator for ideas that have evolved into stand-alone projects and products.

Map of COATS study area showing six candidate Early Winner Focus Areas Chart showing the Methodology for Developing the COATS Regional Architecture

For more detail, review these figures in the California-Oregon Advanced Transportation System: Strategic Deployment Plan, May 2001

Benefits

Research in the COATS region, whether directly funded as a COATS project or as a spinoff project, has brought substantial benefits to the region as well as other stakeholders. These benefits include:

  • First-generation ITS planning and architecture documentation, which each state incorporated into its respective ITS efforts.
  • Successful implementations of ITS technologies to address regional transportation challenges, including CCTV cameras, dynamic message signs, and road weather information systems.
  • Strengthened partnerships between the states which have improved operations and maintenance of the transportation system, especially near the state border.
  • Innovative technology development activities, such as work providing new web-based traveler information mechanisms.
  • Evaluations of rural ITS deployments, for which the results have been presented in national venues.
  • Outreach to a variety of audiences, including the technology transfer activities of the Western States Forum.
Numerous participants raise their hands to ask questions and engage in ODOT's technical presentation during the 2019 Western States Forum. COATS/WSRTC Steering Committee meeting at the 2012 Northwest Transportation Conference in Corvallis, Oregon. Sean Campbell from Caltrans DRISI raises his hand to ask a speaker a question during a technical presentation at the 2016 Western States Rural Transportation Technology Implementers Forum.

Photos by Leann Koon and Doug Galarus.

The four tenets of "Partnership, Technology, Research, and Education" have guided the COATS project over its long history. The results are an extensive list of practical solutions to real problems that have pushed and advanced the state of the practice for rural Intelligent Transportation Systems.

The COATS Project — 1998 to Present

The work conducted through COATS has impacted rural transportation in the western states region in numerous ways. COATS is the foundation of the Western States Rural Transportation Consortium (WSRTC) and has helped kickstart many of the research efforts detailed on this website. These are some of the accomplishments of the COATS project:

The work completed through COATS over its more than 20 year history has led to a number of spinoff projects. You can read more about them on their project pages.

To read more about any of the COATS project efforts, go to the COATS History page.


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