The Rural California/Oregon Advanced Transportation Systems (COATS) project, since its inception in 1998, has sought to improve safety and mobility in rural California through the use of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) technologies. Earlier phases of this project have been successful in promoting ITS awareness, jumpstarting ITS planning and architecture development, demonstrating ITS technologies, testing new applications, performing evaluations, and publicizing the results. COATS Phase 8 builds on the success of earlier COATS phases to preserve and expand the COATS region as an innovator in rural ITS demonstration.

COATS Phase 8 includes tasks that advance the vision of appropriate use of ITS technology to address rural transportation challenges within and beyond the COATS region boundaries. These include:
• Semi-annual COATS Project Tecnical Advisory Panel (PTAP) meetings, where local stakeholders can meet to coordinate ITS deployment and operations efforts, as well as identify areas of concern where research is warranted.
• The annual Forum, a nationally significant, unique gathering of ITS practitioners for networking and information exchange.
• Updating the Forum handbook, a collection of best practices for the planning and execution of the annual Forum.
• Updating and modernizing the COATS web presence, which promotes technology transfer to other DOTs.