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.

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/

They exist in other places too!

[antdude]

See my list of good traffic map sites:

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