Stop us if you've heard this one before: A new technology that analyzes traffic hopes to help you avoid gridlock and cut your commute time. While we're waiting for real-time traffic to get real -- and not tell us about the jam we got stuck in and passed 20 minutes ago -- the truth is that traffic-reporting and prediction technology is incrementally inching ahead slightly faster than, say, rush-hour on LA's 405.
The latest potential weapon in the traffic-fighting arsenal of the drive-time road warrior is IBM's Smart Traveler Research Initiative. Like existing traffic-reporting services, it collects and analyzes data from sensors on roads, bridges, toll booths and intersections. But the new program combines this info and personalizes it via data from participants' GPS-enabled mobile phones, learning their daily routes and routines. The driver then receives an automated email or text message on the status of their commute before they hit the road.
But you can't sign up just yet.
It's a pilot program being conducted by IBM, the California Department of Transportation and the California Center for Innovative Transportation. CCIT is same University of California, Berkeley research institute that teamed with Caltrans, Nokia and NAVTEQ to conduct the Mobile Millennium project, which used participants' GPS mobile phones to monitor traffic patterns. And it's also the real-time traffic component of the new IBM initiative.
But whereas Mobile Millennium was open to the public, Smart Traveler is a closed research program. And it will be interesting to see if drivers are willing to allow IBM to "keep track of everywhere you go," as the researcher says in the video below, in trade for the latest traffic info.
ralphhightower says:
03:40 PM, 04/13/11
I would like to see this technology in South Carolina. Okay, where I live, the congestion is nothing compared to California, Atlanta, or Charlotte.
I avoid taking the interstates to and from work because any wreck will slow up traffic because there are those that really slow down to look and see the wreck. Recently, it was a clear day, but my normal route was taking four to five traffic light cycles just to get clear of the signal. I turned around to head back into the city, headed toward the nuclear plant to take country roads back home.
felonious says:
03:46 PM, 04/13/11
But if everyone uses it, wouldn't everyone be put on the same routes around the traffic?
clarkma5 says:
08:26 PM, 04/13/11
@felonious:
if the system's smart enough to detect and re-route people, it's smart enough to have some predictive capability with regard to how many people go where (only so much, though, free will being what it is...). Traffic engineers are well aware of road capacities, how much it takes to saturate them, and so on. If you're going to give alternate routes to different places, you can do a pretty good job of saturating but not over-saturating a certain corridor.
cutestangchick says:
10:22 AM, 04/14/11
If you're interested in traffic flow, take a higher level civil engineering course or two. Here's the first hit on my google search http://courses.illinois.edu/cis/2011/fall/catalog/CEE/515.html?skinId=2169