Intelligent Transportation Systems

An anonymous reader sends us a link to this story about the U.S. Department of Transportation working on Intelligent Transportation Systems, a long-range plan to build various sorts of intelligence into the national road system. Likely this will result in better traffic monitoring, lots of traffic planning data to analyze to help prevent traffic jams, and less privacy for everyone. The article has a paranoid bent; although they're not wrong that the system will likely facilitate privacy abuses, I wish the author had been a bit more hopeful about possible system designs that would still help alleviate traffic problems without enabling snooping, because obviously such a system could be built if the political will was present to do so.

Comments

Seattle has some smart freeways...

[funny-jack]

Anyone who lives in the Seattle area and doesn't check the traffic conditions before they hit the freeways is missing out.

It's a nice system, and they're constantly (although slowly) expanding it.

Re:Seattle has some smart freeways...

[CubeDenizen]

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).

This article is bull

[smitty45]

At least, about how the DOT does ITS research in some sort of vaccuum.

The research that has been going into ITS has been happening for years, and it's been going on in the same building as the rest of the DOT agencies research projects.

I know, because I worked there.

There are a LOT of things that the US government does with respect to transportation safety and efficiency, and no one pays attention to it. The fact is, the USDOT has been doing excellent research on a lot of topics that takes the (at least US) auto manufacturers *YEARS* to adopt or evaluate. Because it's like this:

NHSTA and Federal Highway come up with very smart ideas and research. State budgets and car manufacturers fight these good ideas, tooth and nail, because they cost money.

Lee Iacocca and Chrysler didn't come up with airbags, the USDOT did, years before.

Woo woo - Personal Rapid Transit

[Colin Smith]

Could be put in place today. Basically it's information theory applied to mass transit systems. It's the only public transport system which promises to ammeliorate traffic congestion on the roads at a remotely reasonable cost, though it isn't going to completely replace the car. The traditional mass transit systems are massively expensive, inefficient and inconvenient in comparison.

Read up on it:
http://www.gettherefast.org/
http://www.cprt .org/
http://faculty.washington.edu/~jbs/itrans/P RT/
http://www.acprt.org/

American PRT system:
http://www.skywebexpress.com/

UK PRT system:
http://www.atsltd.co.uk/

Why this won't happen soon

[Yokaze]

Not necessarily the technological challenge. A highway is far from being a vacuum of information. It is a fairly standardised enviroment with many constraints and fairly predictable behaviour. Cars have been able since the late 90s to drive more than 90% of the time to drive amongst normal traffic.

The main reason is, companies don't want to be liable for the risk.

Calm down, we're talking about the Government.

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually work for one the state versions of these "Shadowy Government Agencies". ITS is just the monitoring of roadway conditions for the most part. They just use fairly simple techniques to record how many cars are on the road at any given point.

We're not talking about RFID chips on vehicles, we're talking about simple magnetic loops that toggle as a car drives over it. Very simple.

Some shipping trucks are tagged for fee purposes and such, but that's about it. Really you'd be blown away at how slowly traffic technology is evolving. Remember, the government is a beuracracy, they move slower than you'd believe.

Really it's the corporate world I'd be looking at, they have much better ways of tracking you, through credit cards, websites, and the like.

They exist in other places too!

[antdude]

See my list of good traffic map sites:

Traffic.tann.net/.
Sigalert.com.
Metrocommute.

Nothing to see here...

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't a government agency. It's a joint project between the USDOT and an organization made up of state DOT's, car companies, universities, and transit authorities. I won't say where my company fits in but I attend the meetings and receive the literature.

The DOT's want it because it'll give them information they've never had before to determine how their roads are being used and abused.

Car companies are a mixed lot. Everyone but GM is involved because OnStar is a model that the ITS is examining and they don't want to be left out in the cold. GM is involved because OnStar is a model that the ITS is examining and they want to leave everyone else out in the cold.

Universities are involved because membership dues fund research.

Transit authorities are in on it because they were the ones to first invest in this technology.

While they are aware of the backlash they will receive over ITS from the public, they don't really have a concrete plan on how to sell it to Joe Blow.

ITS doesn't work unless everyone on the road is participating and short of a government mandate, which they know they aren't going to get, nobody is going to spend the money to deploy it on a full scale. I believe the current thinking is that car companies will install technology like OnStar into all new vehicles and that the value of the technology(hands-free cell phone, emergency assistance, etc.) will be sufficient--they want to get a lot of mileage out of research that shows the technology increases safety--to override the privacy concerns of those who drive older vehicles, thus causing them to buy it, so it's "inevitable" that everything will magically fall into place.

So without a clear vision on how to get it deployed, most of the focus is centered on application which doesn't get them anyplace.

So really...you can be concerned about this all you want but there is nothing to see here. Vehicle count tracking is the cheapest technology we've got and it's still too expensive to deploy with any significant density on private roads and ITS involves constant individual vehicle tracking on all roads--it isn't going to happen any time soon.

It's worth pointing out that ITS is entirely driven by market droids and civil engineers--I have yet to see any information on actual technology