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The exact type of data that the article talks about is available Houston TranStar.
Click on a segment of Beltway 8 and you get a Roadway speed and travel time popup.
Within that box is a link to a live speed chart that shows current speed versus yearly average.

If you don't know the website for your state go to

http://www.traffic.com/ which has traffic information for many cities.

For Dallas-Fort Worth Area http://dfwtraffic.dot.state.tx.us/
For Houston Area http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/layers/ ( one of the best websites in USA)
For San Antonio http://www.transguide.dot.state.tx.us/
For El Paso http://www.transvista.dot.state.tx.us/homepage.htm l

This is being done in Houston right now using the RFID toll road tags. http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/layers/ However, the second they start writing tickets, all of Houston dumps the RFID tags, and they have to hire a LOT of toll both operators. The same thing will happen to the phones. The phone companies will not cooperate with anything that will encourage people to turn off there phones.

I'll stick with my arrangment of the Mobile Houston Real-Time Traffic Map that I made for my RAZR because the original layout requires you to scroll up/down to view the map on the RAZR's small display.

For some reason my RAZR needed a WML page loaded before the HTML page. I also made arrangements for the close-ups of the different areas. All of which can be found
here

I don't live in Houston. I don't even live in the USA.

I did, however, check the site mentioned a couple of posts down, http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/, and it seems every freeway I checked (probably a dozen different cameras, on nearly as many freeways) had a nice wide shoulder to pull onto. If people can't drive because there's a car on the shoulder, then Houston is full of idiots.

But, I guess my point is, I call bullshit on your "no place safe to pull off" comment.

actually nowadays houston has one of the most comprehensive traffic monitoring systems in the world. its pretty nice. great if you want to see where the problems are during rush hour, live.

transtar

An article in Wired says:

Missouri expects to spend less than $3 million a year on the service, Rahn said, although the exact price won't be known until the contract is finalized. Maryland is spending $1.9 million, although the entire Baltimore project costs nearly $5.6 million, said Mike Zezeski, director of real-time traffic operations for the Maryland Department of Transportation.

By contrast, the San Francisco Bay area spent about $35 million over several years to install roadside scanners and develop computer programs, websites and call centers for a real-time traffic service based on electronic toll passes, said Randy Rentschler, a spokesman for the region's Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

The same service is offered in Houston: Houston TranStar. It can be downloaded onto a web-enabled phone.

The data is also provided to XM Radio, who offers it for car navigation systems that can display it on the screen in real-time: http://www.xmradio.com/xmnavtraffic/.

My Acura RL has this feature, and I wish that they would implement some form of this in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.

If you follow the link, you'll find that the purpose of the tracking is relatively benign: they are measuring the average speed of vehicles on the road to generate this map:

http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/layers/

The data is also provided to other distributors, such as XM Radio:

http://www.xmradio.com/xmnavtraffic/

I just bought an Acura RL, which has a navigation system that will display the traffic flow information in a manner similar to the above web page at houstontranstar.org. The area where I live doesn't have the traffic monitoring, but I wondered how it was implemented. Thanks for the tip!

However, you do have a point: the technology enables many potential benefits and abuses.

Yes, I guess they could, in theory, track your vehicle's location, but they're not doing that.

The point was that the transponders were originally sold as a way to auto-pay on the toll roads, not as a tracking device for anything else.

Now that "mission creep" has happened, as with so many other government programs, it would be trivial for local law enforcement to track any "EZ Tag"-equipped car for any reason, or no reason at all. Want to fill the city coffers? Start auto-generating tickets for any vehicle that exceeds the speed limit.

I guess while you were not looking, they went and took another of your "rights." Enjoy those you have left.

Yes, I guess they could, in theory, track your vehicle's location, but they're not doing that.

The point was that the transponders were originally sold as a way to auto-pay on the toll roads, not as a tracking device for anything else.

Now that "mission creep" has happened, as with so many other government programs, it would be trivial for local law enforcement to track any "EZ Tag"-equipped car for any reason, or no reason at all. Want to fill the city coffers? Start auto-generating tickets for any vehicle that exceeds the speed limit.

I guess while you were not looking, they went and took another of your "rights." Enjoy those you have left.

The Harris County Tollroad Authority already uses RFID tags (call EZ Tags) to pay for tolls. Recently, the Houston and Dallas toll systems were integrated so drivers from one city could pay for tolls in the other city with their RFID tag.

The tags could be easily abused to monitor speeding, but they are not. Real-time traffic maps are generated from the travel speed data:

http://www.houstontranstar.org/

Houston Real-Time Traffic Map. It reports on freeways as well as the tollroads. There's electronic signs along the roads informing you of traffic conditions ahead. You can view the signs online, first check the "Message Signs" option in the Map Control box on the lower left, the click a sign on the map to see what its currently displaying.

They already have that here in Texas. You get a 25% discount by using the radio tag and all major freeways have tag readers to monitor speed. That is how they come up with the nifty speed map.

http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/layers/

Houston has a similar traffic map. You can even view parts of the highway from post-mounted cameras and click on areas where accidents have happened to find out the status. It's very useful for planning trips (especially around rush hour).

That's already the case here in Houston. There are RFID readers embedded all over the highways that use to monitor traffic condidtions. They use the EZTags people have for the tollways to monitor traffic flow since tollway users also use the freeways. Look at the pretty map here

This system is run by TxDOT, not law enforcement so AFAIK currently no data is stored any longer than is necessary to track speed from reader to reader. However this system would be very easy to repurpose if RFID license plates become required. Then what's the incentive not to store the data on everyone's travel? I for one don't relish the idea of being pulled over because according the database lookup some traffic cop performed as a matter of routine indictates that I'm well outside of my normal 'area of travel'. Or get singled out for scrutiny because the same look up indicated that my average highway speed is over the limit so I get stuck with a cop tailgating me for 10 miles hoping to catch me speeding even though nothing he witnessed me do would give him any reason to suspect me.

Before you start crying about my tin-foil beanie being on too tight, similar things have already happened. Not because of RFID of course, but I have been pulled over or otherwise harassed for nothing other than "out of state license plate syndrom" multiple times. One of included being tailgated by a cruiser with his brights + spot light on for 15 minutes on highway 101 in Oregon one night on a road trip and being follow through NH for about 15 minutes by troopers blasting us with their radar gun the whole time before finally being pulled over and detained while they searched the vehical. Their reason? "We don't see a lot of plates from your state over here" Since we weren't breaking any laws whatsoever they couldn't ticket us. So excuse me for not wanting to make their jobs any easier.

And... (not sure if Texas has this by the NJ/NYC metro area does) they could log online to check latest traffic reports.

Well, if they're headed to Houston, they can. The Houston Real-Time Traffic Map now covers nearly every stretch of metro-Houston's highway system including toll-roads and HOV lanes, and provides information on accidents, etc. The map is auto-refreshed every 3 minutes.

The system uses sensors placed on over-road to read the "easy-pass" toll road transponders that many people have and establishes average speeds for each stretch of road. My only gripe about the system is that, as of the last time the topic was discussed online, the system does not anonymize the data.

Obviously the system has to have uniquely identifiable data points, but most people who have these toll tags aren't aware that the tags are also providing a record of their speeds to the transit authority that can be directly linked to their automobile. During the testing phase, I also seem to remember that they were using the system to determine where people were going to identify the most common routes. Like any tracking system, this could be used to figure out where to add bus services (or build commuter rail lines instead of our idiotic downtown light-rail system), but given the track record of most governmental agencies for using these types of systems, I doubt that will be the first use.

Nobody's gotten a ticket from this (yet), but with so many major cities scrambling to find new sources of income to shore up their budgets, I wonder how long it will be before the police departments identify this as an easy source of revenue. All it will take is a few cameras to provide a positive ID of the driver along with the speed record from the system and bingo! Instant income for that new initiative that they couldn't get the voters to approve.

As for wireless hotpoint in rest areas, I say it's a pretty cool idea. West Texas is especially hard to drive through - there are some places where you really do have to pay attention those "last gas for 200 miles" signs. Of course, that's offset by the fact that you can see the cops coming long before you're in radar range. ;-) If I can take a break and check my email on the way... cool.

it's for real from a Danish company that has already shown it off at a Chinese Police exhibition.

This sentence leads to some interesting concepts:

* If the Chinese authorities had this cyber-weapon at their disposal, would lives have been saved at Tiananmen Square?

* If the demonstrators had been tagged instead of shot outright, would it have been any better for them in the long run?

* Isn't the whole idea incredibly creepy?

Actually, I have my doubts that a map, like the one tracking the terrorist padre in the demo, is currently possible. Remember the distance-squared law, frequently mentioned in other RFID articles?

This sounds more like a James Bond tracking device than anything possible in the Real World.

Something similar that *would* be useful against *real* criminals would be a TollTag gun -- fire a vehicle tracker into the body panel of a fleeing vehicle, and track it as it travels the freeway system in a wired-up town like Houston.

You mean like this? Granted, Houston is a city where traffic is HORRIBLE (the average commute is something like 2 hours a day) so there's public outcry for funding for projects like this, but I doubt it's the only city with a system like this.