The High-Tech Way to Less Traffic?

Feb. 13, 2005 — -- It's the holy grail of drivers and transportation officials: highways free of the traffic tie-ups that bring vehicles to a crawl or even a standstill for miles on end. But the prevalence of cheap and powerful computer and communication technology could finally be bringing that Utopian vision to reality -- or at least, into sharper focus.

Traffic researchers and automotive industry experts say most of the components needed to reduce traffic jams -- new digital communication systems, sensor-studded "smart roads," and space-based satellite navigation systems, to name a few -- are already contributing significantly.

It wasn't that long ago, for example, that the only tools available to help drivers navigate around jams were AM/FM radio broadcasts of local traffic news. And most drivers would have to figure out for themselves which alternate route to take to skirt the tie-up.

Electronic Eyes and Ears on the Road

But David Shrier, an analyst for real-time traffic systems at ABI Research in Oyster Bay, N.Y., says roadway monitoring and reporting systems have become much more sophisticated in the digital age.

"At least 20 major metropolitan regions in the U.S. have roadways that are filled with automatic sensors to monitor traffic," says Shrier. "They use acoustic sensors that measure for engine and car noises. By timing how fast those sounds are generated, they can rapidly determine how much vehicular traffic is on the road."

Connected to other sensors, such as infrared detectors that can watch for road icing, these monitoring systems can develop a better picture of what's happening on local roads. All this digitally captured information can then be more easily passed to official highway monitoring stations and, ultimately, to drivers.

"The two key factors to real-time systems are that they are accurate and timely," says Shrier. "With [traditional] radio traffic news broadcasts, they're only delivered at certain times -- usually when you're already in the midst of the traffic jam."

Digital Data Distribution

For now, distributing time-sensitive traffic information is still limited usually to electronic signs on the roadside or, in some cases, to radio broadcasts limited to the affected area. But according to analysts and automotive industry executives, that is also rapidly changing.

An increasing number of car makers are adding advanced wireless communication services and options into new model year vehicles that some say could play an important role in easing highway snarls.

One of the more popular features of General Motors' fast-growing OnStar system, for example, is so-called dynamic routing. When subscribers call the OnStar service center from their vehicles, operators can locate them using space-based Global Positioning System satellites. Then using data from regional real-time traffic monitoring services, OnStar operators can guide drivers to their destination while skirting congested areas.

GM says 50 of its vehicle models, as well as select vehicles from six other carmakers, offer the OnStar service option. But the company says it will offer the service as a standard feature on all its vehicles by 2008.

ABI's Shrier says OnStar is only one of the options that will soon be available to traffic-weary drivers.

This year, satellite radio services XM and Sirius are also expected to launch their own real-time traffic systems. These services will cut out the need for human operators by using digital traffic information specifically coded to work with in-vehicle GPS navigation systems. Since the on-board GPS system knows where the car is, the systems will alert drivers only to traffic snarls that will directly affect their routes.

Car-to-Car Data Link

And carmakers and government agencies are working on even faster ways to get time-sensitive traffic information to drivers on the road.

One popular approach is to develop a wireless communication scheme that would allow vehicles to share digital information directly with other nearby cars and a network of road sensors. Such systems would be based on Internet-like standards and procedures such as 802.11, or Wi-Fi, a wireless networking scheme popular with mobile computer users.

The idea, says Dan Benjamin, a senior analyst at ABI, is that since such systems aren't controlled by a central monitoring system, traffic and road condition information is routed quickly and directly to where it's needed.

A car that starts to slip and slide from ice on the road, for example, would automatically note the hazardous road condition and send that information to the car immediately behind it. As the data gets passed down the road, drivers could take the appropriate action before they hit that patch of road.

European carmakers including BMW, Audi, DaimlerChrysler and Volkswagen, announced last month that they had received a grant from the German government to develop such a car-to-car wireless data system. The automakers believe they are on track to a working prototype of the Continuous Communications Air Interface for Long and Medium Range -- or CALM -- system by the end of this year, which will lead to road tests by 2006.

That may be an overly optimistic schedule, says Benjamin. But such mobile Internet-like highway data is certainly possible.

"It's not very expensive to do on a basic level," says Benjamin. And since the technology would be fundamentally based on tried and known Internet standards, "it's definitely something that can be done." He estimates that such "dedicated short-range communications" systems could hit the road by the end of the decade.

Potholes on the Road to Nirvana

Still, while technically possible, DSRC and other high-tech traffic systems have plenty of other obstacles in their path.

For one, development efforts are still widespread and often uncoordinated. Different carmakers, governmental agencies, research groups and state highway agencies all have different ideas and schemes for traffic management.

And there is the question of personal liberties. A smart car and highway monitoring system designed to watch traffic flow could be used to collect data on where and how individuals drive.

Could a system designed to monitor traffic conditions be invasive of privacy?

"Without a fully developed system in place, it would be too early to say what the privacy issues are," says Benjamin. "The development of the technology is a good thing, but if there are privacy issues, we'll need to address that, too."

In other words, there are still very real potholes on the road to creating a congestion-free way of driving.