Setting the agenda in the transportation policy domain: The rise of intelligent vehicle highway systems

The purpose of this study is to analyze the rise of intelligent vehicle-highway systems (IVHS) as a solution to transportation problems in the United States through the perspective of an agenda-setting framework of analysis. IVHS technologies encompass a broad range of concepts, applications, and products. In their aggregated form, however, they are linked together as a unified set of technologies which, when applied, will theoretically alleviate many transportation-related problems associated with safety, congestion, and the environment. This study applies Kingdon's agenda setting framework to this issue, by considering the dynamics associated with the policy, problem, and political streams as they converged in a window of opportunity during the 1991 congressional reauthorization process which resulted in the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA).; Content analysis, interviews, and longitudinal assessments of professional association and congressional interest and support for IVHS technologies were the primary methodological tools applied to this study. I find that IVHS was successfully accepted as a solution to multiple transportation problems as the result of several factors, including the efforts of IVHS advocates actively involved in the transportation policy domain, significant concern over increasing transportation problems, concern over Japanese and European advances in IVHS research and development that were perceived as a threat to American interests, and in response to the predictable window of opportunity of the reauthorization that provided IVHS subsystem participants a venue to advocate for the new technology. In addition, this study explores the development of the IVHS subsystem, and considers the dynamics of this subsystem as it evolved in the immediate post-ISTEA era through an assessment of two related components: the National IVHS Architecture Development Program and the Automated Highway Systems Program. This study contributes to the agenda setting literature as it extends Kingdon's framework beyond the coupling of the streams in the window of opportunity and links them to the survival and institutionalization of the idea of IVHS.