The rapid growth and development of motorisation combined with relatively small investments made to improving transportation infrastructure in cities, as well as in tourism destinations, has led to serious problems in the unobstructed movement of vehicles in public traffic areas. Traffic congestion on roadways, in ferryboat ports and at state borders during the summer months and year-round lines of cars going to or returning from work are a regular presence in traffic in most urban and tourism destinations in Croatia, as well as in the rest of Europe. Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) can be implemented in urban and tourism centres, which, for example, have no opportunity for increasing the capacity of their traffic networks by constructing new, or expanding existing, transportation infrastructure, and no opportunity for increasing parking capacities. The only solution would be to optimise traffic networking by introducing intelligent technologies. Intelligent transportation systems and services represent a coupling of information and telecommunication technologies with transportation means and infrastructure to ensure greater efficiency in the mobility of people and goods. ITS implementation helps to provide better information to motorists and travellers (tourists); improve traffic and tourist flows, cargo transportation, public passenger-transportation; facilitate the work of emergency services; enable electronic traffic-related payments; enhance the security of people in road traffic; and monitor weather conditions and the environment. To motorists the system provides guidance to roads on which traffic is less intense, guidance to available parking spaces, and guidance, for example, to a good restaurant or interesting tourist attraction. his paper focuses, in particular, on ITS application in city and tourism destinations in connection with parking problems. Guiding vehicles to the closest vacant parking space helps to reduce traffic congestion, reduce the amount of time lost in searching and increase the occupancy rate of car-parks
Mitigating Traffic Congestion: The Role of Intelligent Transportation Systems
