Glossary
Maintainability
To keep in an existing operational state preserved from failure or decline of services (with minimum repair, efficiency, or validity).
Maintenance and Construction
This area addresses the monitoring, maintaining, improving, and managing of the roadway physical condition and its associated infrastructure equipment, as well as the available resources necessary to conduct these activities. This area also includes work zone management and safety, and the dissemination of maintenance and construction activities to other centers.
Major ITS Project
Any ITS project that implements part of a regional ITS initiative that is multi-jurisdictional, multi-modal, or otherwise affects regional integration of ITS systems.
Map Data Message
Provides the road geometry at an intersection.
Master Plan
A comprehensive plan to guide the long-term physical development of a particular transportation facility.
Megaregion
Large networks of metropolitan regions. The five major categories of relationships that define megaregions are: environmental systems and topography; infrastructure systems; economic linkages; settlement patterns and land use; and shared culture and history.
Metadata
'Data about data', the information that describes content. It is information about the meaning of data, as well as the relationships among Information Objects, rules for their use and transformation, and policies on access. See Flow Characteristics.
Metropolitan Planning Area
The geographic area determined by agreement between the metropolitan planning organization (MPO) for the area and the Governor, in which the metropolitan transportation planning process is carried out.
Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO)
The policy board of an organization created and designed to carry out the metropolitan transportation planning process for urbanized areas with populations greater than 50,000, and designated by local officials and the Governor of the state.
Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP)
The official multimodal, long-range transportation plan addressing no less than a 20-year planning horizon that is developed, adopted and updated by the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) through the metropolitan transportation planning process.
Misbehaving user
A user who exhibits misbehavior.
Misbehavior
Behavior that results in devices receiving information that could cause them to take incorrect actions.
Misbehavior Information
Includes Misbehavior Reports from System Users, as well as other improper System User acts, such as sending wrong message types, invalid logins, unauthorized access, incorrectly signed messages and other inappropriate System User behavior.
Misbehavior Report
Data from a System User identifying suspicious behavior from another System User that can be characterized as misbehavior.
Mission Definition
A legacy document of the National Architecture that, as the first of the technical documents, covers a broad range of ITS related issues. It contains the overall mission of ITS deployment, as well as the operational concept, which deals with specific ITS goals and objectives; ITS user groups and other stakeholders; ITS user services; and potential sources for funding, operations and maintenance. The document also defines operational requirements at the system level, user requirements, performance requirements, and program requirements.
Mobile
These are vehicle types (private/personal, trucks, transit, emergency, commercial, maintenance, and construction vehicles) as well as non-vehicle-based platforms including portable personal devices (smartphones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), tablets, etc.) used by travelers (vehicle operators, passengers, cyclists, pedestrians, etc.) to provide and receive transportation information. All Physical Objects of type Vehicle or Personal are Mobile.
Mobility Index
Index of the ability of users of a system to move defined as [Ton-miles of travel] / [Vehicle-miles of travel * Average speed].
Mode
A specific form of transportation, such as automobile, subway, bus, rail, air, bicycle, or foot.
Multimodal
More than one travel mode including potentially the four highway modes (auto/truck, bicycle, bus/transit, and pedestrian), aviation, rail, and seaports.
Multimodal Corridor Plan
A plan that identifies interregional transportation needs involving Strategic Intermodal System (SIS), Emerging SIS, regionally significant and local facilities in a corridor.
Multimodal Transportation
The use of more than one mode to serve transportation needs in a given area.