Using Cellular Traffic to Monitor Traffic Jams

An Anonymous Coward writes "The BBC has this story about Scots company Applied Generics and their plan to use cellphone location data to determine where there are traffic jams and (presumably) generate (and sell?) evasive routing tactics for drivers. They are using both passive cellular traffic (what you get when the phone is switched on) and active (drivers phoning up to say they'll be late - in standing traffic, I hope) to look for clusters of immobile cellphones along major routes. The whole idea has a sort of "why didn't I think of that?" neatness. Personally I wouldn't mind my own traffic being used wholesale (aggregated with thousands of other users), but how do other /.ers feel about a company profiting from data emitted by the cellphone that they paid for?"

Comments

Have roads, will fill them

[pieterh]

The general rule is: add road capacity, and more people will drive. Inevitably a technology like this will feed back into mobile guidance systems based on GPS, with the final result that every road, major to minor, will be congested equally heavily. Building new roads or using smarter routing techniques will not cut traffic congestion. Living closer to work and using a bike or walking will.

Re:Have roads, will fill them

[Wobbit]

What you say is true, but as long as we have these roads, we should use them to their full potential. I agree we should look for alternative ways of transportation, or encourage people to go and live closer to their work, but that dosn't mean we can't optimize road usage.

Re:Have roads, will fill them

[pieterh]

As far as I can see, and this is confirmed by my own experience of two decades of commuting, people drive because they do not seriously try to find alternatives. Make an effort, look for places to live in the inner cities, find ways to work from home... all these will add to one's quality of life, save hours of wasted time, and cut the amount of waste caused by pushing a ton of metal around the countryside.

So, anything that makes driving less pleasant must be a 'good thing' in this respect, and anything that delays the inevitable must be a bad thing.

Typically people stick to highways, and these will get blocked while smaller roads will stay free. I can't see that 'load balancing' cars onto smaller roads is a good thing. It won't cut anyone's travel time. It won't reduce the total number of cars. It will simply create more accessible road space.

As for the 'potential' of roads: the capacity of a road decreases once you get past a certain car density. The only way I can see of optimizing road usage is to charge for it and raise the price until usage drops to this density.

Re:Have roads, will fill them

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but I think that bigger effects can be achieved by distributing the traffic more evenly over time (i.e. avoid rush-hours) than to distribute it over space. The primary reason that we have traffic jams is that almost everybody works 9 to 5. As a consequence we design our roads for this peak traffic while most of the time they are almost empty.

Re:Have roads, will fill them

[CaptainAlbert]

> The general rule is: add road capacity, and
> more people will drive.

At best, this applies only up to a point. At worst, it's a myth - and a dangerous one. Roads aren't just for car drivers! They're also for cyclists, motobikes and buses. The congestion problem in London (UK) is particularly acute to the extent that the administration is trying to introduce tolls for entering the city centre.

How can they persuade more people to ditch their cars and use public transport? By providing reliable bus and underground services. No-one uses London buses in rush hour, because they're too slow. Why? Because there's so much traffic on the roads, caused by the people who won't take the bus... the only way to break the cycle is to reduce congestion. This means reducing the density of traffic, either by (a) removing cars from the roads, or (b) making the roads bigger, or (c) both of the above.

In London at least, roads don't "cause traffic" as you suggest. No-one in their right mind would try driving in/through London if they didn't absolutely have to.

The issue with cyclists is the same. Nobody want to cycle in central London because it's so dangerous. Why? Because of all the traffic... and so on. Why don't more people walk, instead of driving half a mile down the road? Because the roads are lethal for pedestrians and the pelicon crossings take forever to change. Why? because of all the tra.... :)

Of course, any move to impose congestion charging / extra taxation / higher petrol prices or whatever are met with huge resistance from motoring groups. But by continuing to overuse their cars, they only make the situation worse for themselves.

OK, time to stop my off-topic ranting. I just get irate about these things. :) BTW I don't own a car and neither does my wife; we take the train to work because it's cheaper and safer.

Re:Have roads, will fill them

[Cato]

You are exaggerating - I live in London too, and the trains and tubes are not that bad (at least from where I live). Calling the trains 'a death trap' is ironic when you consider that railway transport is one of the safest ways to travel - far more people die every year on the roads, but this is virtually invisible since it happens in many small accidents, compared to the large and well publicised rail accidents.

The real solution is time shifting and working from home - I commute into work at 9 to 9.30 am and the tubes are nearly empty.

Re:Have roads, will fill them

[wisemat]

There's a problem with your first point: Motorists and biciclists like different types of roads.

I take my bicicle most of the time, and I become ever more acutely aware of this, especially when I start noting the different routes I and my wife(in her car since she has had knee surgery) take to the exact same place.

Motorists like streets with high speed limits and mulitple lanes. And they don't care much one way or another about how wide the shoulders are or how good the drainage is on the road.

On my bike, I am intensely interested in having very wide shoulders and drainage matters since I hate riding through standing rain water. I also prefer not having multiple lanes since I often have to ride straight in right turn only lanes and turning left with multiple lanes is such a pain I normally just cross the street twice with the light on those roads.

And while I won't hesitate to ride even on high speed roads, I get a lot more nervous when cars are whipping past me at 45-50 mph than I do when they slip by at 30-35.

I think it would help if cities started desining roads more with bicyclists and pedestrians in mind. Give us wider shoulders, lower speeds(just a little!), better drainage, and maybe hike the tax on gas and more people would walk/ride

Better public transportation would help too. I don't mind riding to/from work and school, but when I'm shopping the car helps to carry the purchases, even relatively small items and over 5 miles I don't want to take my bike. But I could deal with public transportation...

How long before....

[MadKeithV]

They use this to determine if you've been speeding?

"Jim, this guy only took 5 minutes between node 1 and node 2, he must have been travelling over the speed limit!"

Oh well, I guess they've secured funding for this project that way :)

This would be good if..

[yebb]

they also indicated, for how long trafic had been stopped/slow. The article makes mention that this technology isn't that functional because it doesn't give any indication about the reason for the slowdown, but if there is a time period associated with the trafic jam, driver could make assumptions about what the problem was, and wether or not to find alternate routes.

Pf

[zmooc]

...but how do other /.ers feel about a company profiting from data emitted by the cellphone that they paid for?"

This company isn't profiting from data emitted by the specific cellphone you paid for, they're profiting from the collective data emitted by all cellphones around. What's wrong with that? Why would it be wrong for anyone to listen to a certain (group of) frequenc[y|ies] and produce statistical information from the data they receive?! I personally think this is a great idea and if you are having problems with someone receiving the data you send out on a certain frequency then don't send it where everyone can receive it.

Re:Trusting Big Brother

[Erasmus Darwin]

"it should be possible to measure the number of cell phones at a particular location by tracking the amount of radion signals without knowing anything about the signal's contents."

Yeah, but there's a big difference between knowing that every 3 minutes for the past 30 minutes, there's been approximately 10 cell phones at intersection X and knowing that the same 10 cell phones have been stuck at intersection X for the past 30 minutes. One just implies an average of 10 cell phone users worth of traffic through the area while the other implies an actual traffic stop.

*public* frequencies

[iiii]

if you are having problems with someone receiving the data you send out on a certain frequency then don't send it where everyone can receive it.

I totally agree. As a corrolary to that, I have a big problem with companies that broadcast on the public spectrum and then say it is illegal to use their signal without paying them. Like satellite tv and radio.

Hey, I didn't ask to be bombarded with their broadcasts, and I have no contracts or agreements with them, yet they send signals right to my house. Why shouldn't I be able to do whatever I want with those signals? (Including decrypting them and watching/listening to them, if I can) If they don't want me to use them don't send them to my house!!

Same goes for cell phone and any other broadcasts. The people/companies that send out the broadcasts have to accept the risk that entails. If they want it to be private they should ensure that themselves, not rely on the law for protection.

Laws that do offer protection for public broadcasts by prohibiting listening (cell wiretapping laws) or decrypting (DMCA) should be eliminated. Wiretapping laws make sense for wires, and other technologies that are inherently private, not for broadcasts, which are inherently public.

Re:*public* frequencies

[Ashtangi]

Laws that do offer protection for public broadcasts by prohibiting listening (cell wiretapping laws) or decrypting (DMCA) should be eliminated. Wiretapping laws make sense for wires, and other technologies that are inherently private, not for broadcasts, which are inherently public.

Great point . . . one I wish that more people had a handle on. Feel free to encrypt your broadcast to make sure (hopefully) that it remains secure, but don't expect some police activity to step in and prosecute someone who may intercept and tinker with your signal. This kind of police activity would fall into the "Orwellian" categories.

The remainder of this post has been removed and replaced with the following summation: ditto

Driving vs. not driving

[non-poster]

So, this system will figure out traffic jams by determining what cell phones aren't moving... right?
Each cell tower has 0.3-2.0 mile radius of coverage, right?

So, I'm driving down the road, and roam to a certain cell, then get out of my car and walk to the library, where I sit down and read a book for 2 hours. My phone is still affiliated to the same cell site. Does the system think I'm stuck in traffic for 2 hours, since my phone isn't moving between cells anymore?

How about when you're driving in a caravan of 40 cars and when you stop at a rest area or gas station, for 20 minutes? How about arriving at your destination? Is that more statistically significant to the system due to the larger number of subscribers, and now it will think there is a traffic jam?

How about roads with high-occupant-vehicle lanes (aka "express lanes")? Those lanes are typically right next to the "regular" lanes, so the system can't differentiate between a cell phone in the regular lane and the HOV lane. The HOV lane is moving at 55mph, but the regular lane is moving at 10mph. Each car in a HOV lane has 4 people, each with a cell phone, and each car in a regular lane has 1 person with a phone. The system can't possibly be accurate in this situation.

only works for the good areas of town?

[tedtimmons]

Hmm. So most cities don't have an even dispersion of cell phones among various neighborhoods. I'm betting that lower-class people are less likely to have a cell phone, and less likely to talk on it while driving.

So would a system like this under-report the traffic in lower-class neighborhoods? Would that cause more money to be poured into traffic mitigation in higher-class neighborhoods, simply because there are more doctors and lawyers talking on their cell phones?

-ted

Why haven't they?

[wbav]

My question is, why haven't they done this with like the onstar system. Or have they? It would seem to me, that if you wanted to make the most money, you'd offer these units for cheap, use their data to find where problem areas were, and charge a monthly fee (of let's say 10 dollars) for traffic data.

If the onstar unit was cheap enough (less than 100) and it offered data that would allow most people to get to work on time, I can't see why people wouldn't find them a invaluable.