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Starting in January 2005, special “no-cost” PDF copies of the National Transportation Communications for ITS Protocol (NTCIP) standards are available from the NTCIP website, www.ntcip.org. The available "no-cost" standards are those that are already jointly approved and published. The special offer is made possible by funding from the FHWA’s Joint Program Office, and will only be available for a limited, 12-month period.
The Federal Highway Administration hopes to counter the "standards cost too much" barrier that may be preventing some consulting firms and transportation agencies from using standards-based project design. For over ten years, the Department of Transportation’s FHWA has funded and promoted many Intelligent Transportation System programs, of which the NTCIP is a part.
Since 1996, the published versions of the NTCIP standards have been available for purchase as soft-cover standards and electronic files. NEMA sells the documents through Global IHS. ITE sells the NTCIP standards through their professional bookstore.
The initial 13 “no-cost” standards are actually priced from $30 to $104 each, and have a total retail value of $647 if purchased together. NTCIP Coordinator Bruce Schopp says, "By the end of calendar 2005, we’re expecting to have 26 of the standards available as PDF files on the NTCIP website."
During the special offer’s first week, over 100 registered users downloaded the available standards from the NTCIP site. The NTCIP has had its own website since 1995. During 2004, the site had about 5,200 unique visitors who each visited more than once. “That’s a gauge of the total number of transportation industry practitioners who have some level of interest in the NTCIP standards,” says Schopp.
The NTCIP is a family of data communications protocols used for the remote command and control of field-deployed traffic management sensors and devices. NTCIP protocols are also used for center-to-center information exchange between traffic management centers and other command centers.
The NTCIP family is an open, vendor-neutral, consensus-based set of standards built on internet protocols. The NTCIP family includes data dictionaries for 12 different end devices, and profiles that select the communications network features of the internet and other protocol standards. NTCIP is extensible—meaning vendor-unique features can be added to the standardized core functions.
The NTCIP is a project of three standards developing organizations—NEMA, AASHTO, and ITE—with partial funding from the FHWA ITS Joint Program Office.
NTCIP standards have been developed and approved for:
- Traffic signals—the signal control systems at intersections
- Dynamic message signs—the variable message signs along roads
- Environment sensor stations—roadside weather stations
- CCTV—monitoring camera pan-tilt-zoom and camera control
- Ramp meter control—signal systems at freeway on-ramps
Eleven NEMA member companies now have NTCIP-based transportation control products, and a total of 35 organizations have registered to develop their own extended features using the NTCIP standards.
The NTCIP standards that are jointly approved and published are also still for sale in hardcopy form from Global Engineering Documents.
As other NTCIP standards reach joint approval status and are edited for publishing, PDF files for each of those new standards will be added to the no-cost download feature on the NTCIP website. Then they will also each be available for 12 months.
