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Tracking Traffic Jams With Cell Phones
kaufmanmoore writes, "Companies and governments are looking to alternatives to expensive radars and road sensors to track traffic jams. Two Atlanta-based companies are aiming to use data from wireless carriers to mark how fast phones are moving and overlaying that with maps to calculate traffic conditions. One of the companies, AirStage, has already partnered with Sprint-Nextel and the Georgia DOT to cover Atlanta's notorious traffic. The plans raise obvious privacy concerns over the usage of the data of your cell phone's location and the accuracy of this data." From the article: "[The] systems rely on wireless companies allowing them to process the data from their towers that calculate the position of each phone about twice a second when it's being used and once every 30 seconds when it's not. [One company's technology] can track vehicles to within 330 feet without using Global Positioning System satellites. Its software is designed to weed out the difference between pedestrians and drivers, then crunch it into detailed color-coded maps that show average speeds along roadways."
If he had a cellphone, this could really screw things up.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Automated speeding tickets will show up on your cell phone bill.
Now we can pay absurd amounts of money per month for service, and get all our rights to privacy stripped away! Heck yes!
-r
I'd be interested if somebody has done a study to determine how much additional throughput is gained by giving X% of drivers congestion information. My guess is it would do more to reduce the variance of travel times than it would to reduce the average travel time.
If the phone companies strip identifying information from data one might be
tempted to think there is no problem in making this information available.
However, the privacy concern may not be limited to the ability track a specific phone, which they would probably require court permission to do.
There are lots other uses, and abuses of such technology, such as finding where tonight's big party is located, which local watering hole is over-capacity, how much traffic the local liquour store (or street corner dealer) is getting.
Even if such uses were void of personal data, they provide data about the location,
whether that be a private home or a business.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168794&cid =14070720
Seriously? List of previous postings. And yes, it's the same company.
So, how does one differentiate between pedestrians and cars in a traffic jam?
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
How long 'til it's used to ticket me for speeding without the hassle of actually putting a cop at the corner?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Wow, this might just be a record. Maybe not all exactly the same thing, but still the same idea :)
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http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/1
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/10/2
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/0
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/30/12432
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/16/07621
Congratulations Slashdot, on having sextuplets (though maybe there are other, lost stories)!
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/05/2
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/10/2
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/14324
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/07452
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/01/15924
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/16/07621
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/30/12432
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/13/04282
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
...they track how many traffic jams are a result of cell phones?
Its software is designed to weed out the difference between pedestrians and drivers, then crunch it into detailed color-coded maps that show average speeds along roadways.
I doubt they even have to employ this software in LA. From what I hear, nobody walks in LA. (I won't be fooled by a cheap cinematic trick, It must have been just a cardboard cut out of a man, Top-forty cast off from a record stand.)
Push Button, Receive Bacon
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
It's like those radio traffic alerts on I-78, US-1/9 and other routes into NYC...as soon as people here there is a jam on 78, all the cars are on 1/9 and you create another traffic jam. It's an unstable routing algorithm. The real answer came to me in a dream. We need MORE roads, LESS cars, and another tunnel into Manhattan.
When our presence, our body is being used for commercial gain we should be getting a cut.... a kickback for opting in to be a part of the service. Cellular companies nickel and dime us to death with various 'services' that should be part of the standard package and then they get to resell us as data to some 3rd party without giving us something back??? I say no.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Hey no harm in wishing!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
What we really need is fewer roads, fewer cars, more restrictions on driving, and more public transit. It looks likely that Bloomberg's administration will spend its last years following London's example, perhaps even going so far as to turn whole sections of Manhattan into pedestrian-only zones. Making it easier to get around the city can only be good for the regional economy, and personally, I'm all for it.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
...for being used as one datapoint in the product they'll be selling their traffic-data customers?
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
Great! Now thanks to you we also have a duped comment for this duped article :p
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
You think anyone should use London as an example of a sane public transport system? And yes it's still a crap place to live.
Deleted
Cool site that goes live tomorrow.
mobi.traffic.com
I imagine this won't survive Slashdot, but please destroy it(I need some numbers:-). This is not meant for a web browser to all people who will say that it looks ugly in Firefox.
It should be easy to weed out the cars and pedestrians. The cars are the ones that are stationary...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Flash mob, walking down a major street all talking on cell phones.
“Causing Traffic Jams With Cell Phones”
Once someone has an accident you can all report the incident and resulting congestion right away!
Why bother.
Did it really take you 9 minutes to figure out you didn't say anything the first time, or is that how long the system made you "slow down, Cowboy"?
I'd be interested if somebody has done a study to determine how much additional throughput is gained by giving X% of drivers congestion information. My guess is it would do more to reduce the variance of travel times than it would to reduce the average travel time.
As much as it seems a given that "You're going to have to drive home anyway", if you're in a situation where you can take advantage of the couple hours you'd otherwise spend in a traffic jam, being able to discover abnormal traffic ahead of time is a godsend.
That being said, I'm not sure that the benefits of this technology are sufficiently greater than existing technology ("traffic every 10 minutes" radio stations that already distribute this information on the web, as well as OTA), to justify the added privacy concerns.
Someone needs to come up with a checklist for why [someone's technical solution for avoiding traffic jams] is [impractical/unworkable/unacceptable] like I have seen here on Slashdot for spam. It seems we constantly hear about some new proposal for eliminating traffic jams, yet none of them ever come to fruition. I'll throw out some general reasons why:
1. The solution generally assumes that everyone opts-in. This is impossible. Not everyone is going to buy a new device to assist in traffic tracking. If an existing device, not everyone is going to have that device.
2. The tracking accuracy of the device or measurement system is poor. Look at this article. 330 feet? In places where traffic is congested, 330 feet can cover 6 streets.
3. Who is going to pay for this? Fine, you could technically get some traffic statistics if your device magically worked and everyone participated. Is it actually a sustainable business? Doubt it.
4. How much is it going to cost? We are talking a lot of bandwidth here to be getting enough data (and through low/expensive bandwidth mediums like cell networks, et cetera), and a lot of processing of that data against geographic databases to be able to do any meaningful data analysis.
5. So let's say you took care of the technical hurdles and had a lot of data and processed it and you had a great map of traffic in the local metro region. You are now parked on your ass in the operation center viewing your beautiful map, which is great and all, except you aren't driving and everyone who is driving has no idea how beautiful your map is. How are you going to get this information to people who are actually, you know, in traffic?
6. As a follow up of (5), let's say that you had a little printer in everyone's car and printed out your beautiful map right to their passenger seat. They pick it up, and while they are googling at its beauty and trying to locate where they are on the map, they plow right into the back of oil truck, explode, and die. Thanks, you just caused a huge backup, asshat. Assuming you get the information to the drivers, how are they going to be able to interpret the data with minimal attention while they are, you know, driving?
I would go on (and I hope someone else does), but these various traffic jam proposals that never work out are getting kind of silly. Everyone thinks they are a genius because they figured out that hey, if we got information on where are the cars are... and we put it on a map.. with like computers and stuff... we'd like... solve traffic! Except that getting from "genius idea" to "practical and effective traffic control" is non-trival.
Quick, take down the news story about traffic jams by sending them too much traffic!
That this is at least the 8th time I've read this story wouldn't even be so bad if it didn't attract the tinfoils like flies who post the same comments in every one.
As somebody who current lives in Atlanta, I'm still trying to figure out how this is going to benefit me. The traffic question in Atlanta isn't one that can be solved by planning alternate routes around large traffic jams. The problem here is that the traffic is everywhere and at the right (wrong?) time of day there really is no good alternate route that isn't congested. Atlanta growth has far outstripped its ability to build the necessary road infrastructure to handle the traffic. What they really need in this city is more capacity or a second, outer loop around the city, but that plan has been talked and talked about for years and it seems that none of the 5 or 6 counties in the area can ever agree on a solution for an outer loop.
My solution to the traffic problem? I'm moving in a week to a place without this kind of insane traffic.
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
..with a plane full of passengers? Oh, and we all have cellphones.
AC
All your cell phones is belong to us!
What's the use of reducing the average travel time if some days it takes you 9 minutes, and other days takes you 33? Doesn't matter if my average commute is only 16 minutes, I have to leave 33 minutes before work every day to make sure I'm not late. Some days I get there 24 minutes early. I'd appreciate anything that can reduce the standard travel time deviation.
Its software is designed to weed out the difference between pedestrians and drivers
So how does that work? Any sufficiently slow-moving vehicle is indistinguishable from a pedestrian. Hell, sometimes pedestrians are moving faster than the traffic.
Although it's difficult to say whether or not it's even necessary, since if all phones in a certain area are moving at 2-3MPH, it's more likely due to traffic than, say, no cars on the road. Maybe not at 2AM (except on New Years), but that shouldn't be hard to account for.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
If two phones are moving down the same street and one is going much faster than the other, then you can probably assume the slower of the two is a pedestrian.
If a phone is moving the wrong way down a one way street then it's a pedestrian (or elderly driver)
Pedestrians tend to move at a much more regular speed in urban areas. Sure they have to stop at lights, but they keep moving steadily whereas traffic jam traffic is usually stop/start.
Once you've identified a phone as a pedestrian then you can exclude it's data for some period of time or until they exceed 10mph.
Things like lightrail could be more problematic though.
By the way, Atlanta is already well-covered. Lots of people whom I know make use of this map. I wonder what the GDOT could have up their sleeves with this project.
Now I need to make a tin hat for my cell phone.
qz
Great. It's bad enough that I just got a $400 ticket issued by a camera, but now my phone is going to be able to give me speeding tickets, too?
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Leatherface had a cell phone, he could, too... Oh. wait...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
duplicate slashdot stories.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
You are starting with the assumption thatto study the traffic flow has a direct practical pupose. Silly person! This research is designed to be slick, ingenious, quantifieable, and aimed like a laser as the two basic needs: 1 a grant to cover it, and 2 a opening of that age old phrase somewhere warmly tucked into the conclusion: "This demonstrates the need for further study". Thus demonstrating the need for an additional grant.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
For the most part in the Atlanta metro, mass transit, or public transit will, for the most part, only work inside the perimiter. With the outlying metro counties commute averaging 35 miles and 50 miles one way is not unheard of, transit lines sufficiently long enough would be a problem to create in this area. I knew people who were commuting from Aniston Alabama to the King/Queen Buildings (about 100 miles one way) as well as from Chattanooga to Downtown (about 115 miles one way).
And what gets me isn't so much as the capacity of the roads here, they've just ingeniously devised such wonderful bottlenecks (Spaghetti Junction, 75s/285e and the fact that it faces directly into the Sun during the summer months, The downtown connector where i75/i85 merge) and they work slower the poured molasses in the frozen arctic. I live up 575 and since May they've been working on an building a lane from Exit 7 to Exit 8 (1 mile) which would allow a large portion of the bottleneck there to avoid merging with continuing traffic, and they are still not done! And lets not forget GA 316... Though that's a nightmare, when they start construction on it, hell on earth would be a description...
This brings another part of the Atlanta metro area's traffic into light... The non-highway roads are extremely screwed (and most of them named Peachtree) to the point it's easier to get on the freeway for one mile and take the 10 minutes to go that one mile, than it is to drive the city streets, which can take you 5 - 10 miles to get to the same point and are a convoluted mess worse than the highways here.
And about the Norther Arc, that would have been great. I commuted 55 miles one way (I refuse to live Gwinnet County) and Highway 20, which is one lane each direction has fully loaded semi trucks driving from Canton to Lawrenceville. Couple that with school buses and it's not unheard of to take an hour and 45 minutes to go Highway 20. If an accident happens on Highway 20, you're screwed. Without GPS navigation or extremely decent maps (and the ability to read them) you will not be able to get around the accident and even if you get to a point that you can turn off to get around that accident, following the country roads can take a half hour to go a few miles up the road to get around the accident. Country/County roads here make absolutely no sense and you don't know you're coming up on the road you need/want until you have nearly passed it.
For another description of Atlanta's screwed up roads..
But fewer roads isn't going to work here in the Atlanta Metro Area... We could definitely use more intelligently designed interchanges.
As a side note: Some students at Georgia State created a video to see what would happen if people here drove the speed limit.... People actually pulled off on to the shoulder to get around them...
CellPhone: You are moving faster than the average vehicle at this time.
Driver: Yeah....coz i gotta pee....n my home is still 10 miles
CellPhone: You have been moving faster than average vehicle for more than 10 minutes. You are tagged to be a potential terrorist. A neutralizing missile is on its way.
Driver: @#$%..i peed in my pants...am slowing down
CellPhone: Too late. An F-16 is hovering to make sure to dont dodge the missle.
5 seconds later....
BOOM!!!
The problem with missile guiding system boomed the F-16 instead.
Eclipse PDE and Me
I read /. for a couple years and never commented before, but now I had to : this must be like the 3rd time ***I*** read a news very similar to this one here. I wonder how many times something like this popped up here already.
So now the same cell phone that caused the traffic jam can help me avoid the mess? Brilliant!
Even if Superman isn't visiting a city street near you a cycle courier could confuse data, they all carry mobiles and they are the fastest (human) in the city.
shown to cause reposted article jams on Slashdot.
I'm going to guess that you've never lived in an area with really bad traffic. In areas where the roads are really overloaded, it affects your travel in the same way that the weather does. If traffic conditions change, you need to change your route, or you risk being stuck in a jam for hours.
You don't want a traffic monitoring system to measure usual rush-hour traffic, since as you point out, it's reasonably predictable, but what you need to know is when something happens -- usually, an accident -- that would cause people to want to change their route.
On some heavily overloaded roads in Northern Virginia, all it takes is a minor fender-bender, fog, sun glare, or interesting distraction, and a 60 minute commute can turn into 90 or 120 minutes. If you had real-time traffic information in advance, you'd probably take a different route. Without that information, you'd just go piling into the back end of the jam.
Collectively, the more people that have better information, the more intelligent decisions they can make, and the better they can choose routes and balance the traffic load across varying roads and changing conditions.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
How can you tell the difference between -a guy with a cell phone sitting in his car, stuck in traffic -A guy with a cell phone parked on the side of the road, -A guy with a cell phone zipping through traffic on a bike/rollerblades/skateboard/etc? -A guy with a cell phone walking along the side of the road -A guy with a cell phone sitting in his office near the road or sitting in a roadside cafe? with the accuracy mentioned, A secondary road that sees little traffic outside of rush hour, lined with office buildings is likely to look more congested than the main artery that is choked up, but still crawling...