Abstract Public transportation systems in many cities of Latin America must employ physical architectures of intelligent transportation systems for the operation and control of passenger transportation vehicles. However, the high cost of specialized computational systems for this physical architectures in one of the higher impediments to the integration of this systems in the vehicle network. For the purpose of this work, is necessary to ask what are the currently low-cost computational systems used in vehicular applications. In this paper we made a documentary research to analyse the current computational systems associated with the physical architecture for public transportation in intermediate cities. We analysed collected information following the three points of methodological development for a documentary researches. Results shows that the use of low-cost computational systems for data capture in vehicles, the use of millimetre waves in the electromagnetic spectrum for data transmission by means of mobile communication networks, and the adoption of international standards, are viable alternatives for the integration of technologies into physical architectures of vehicle networks, in order to improve the operation of public passenger transportation systems in intermediate cities in Latin America.