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Mobile Phones to Monitor Traffic Congestion
shas3n writes "In an interesting and innovative way Bangalore city, India, has come up with a way to monitor road traffic congestion by monitoring the density of mobile phones. This can give users quantitative and directional information of traffic flow without significant additional infrastructure investments. The congestion data is already available online."
Isn't this something like the seventh time this has been covered on slashdot?
Unfortunately, the way they monitor traffic congestion is to send out a bunch of people to go see what the traffic congestion is, thereby adding to the traffic congestion. :)
They need to be careful because a number of people could live along side the road and the number of people at home will change throughout the day. As these people are not mobile, and the people change during the day, it is difficult to discern stopped traffic from people watching the television.
I'd be interested to see if they have addressed these problems and if so, how.
Luckily there are no privacy issues in showing where individual cell phones are!
Strategically placed cameras is probably a better idea.
But why use a simple solution when there's a perfectly good complicated solution to try?
...shut up and drive?
Just a thought.
yes.
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GREAT idea. wish the did the same here in nyc. here in ny local news station (1010am) asks people to call in traffic updates which are free if you have a certain carrier. even the mta (metro subway) used surveys a few years back when they first went electronic with the metrocard. dont see why they couldnt log entrance exits and entrances and times.
With so many cars having GPS' factory-installed since 2000 I have wondered myself why this hasn't already been done in the US; thousands of cars uploading position reports and velocities during rushhour would provide much better information than the notoriously unreliable traffic sensors.
Probably issues of payment for the cell phone charges and privacy.
sPh
Does this take into account the numerous bicycles and ox-drawn vehicles that are still a part of the traffic picture there?
More likely sub-roadway pressure or magnetic sensors
And for the people who are arguing the bicycles, pedestrians etc would mess with the actual traffic congestion, remember that in bangalore those constitute a great deal of the traffic jam too.
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This has been brought up before
I am glad to see that it is available though. I spent last month in Bangalore and spent over 3 hours in traffic every day to get to and from work, i thought it was hell and I live in Boston! I don't expect that this will help the problem too much. The city needs hard solutions to the traffic problems and they have already started by not allowing any new motor rickshaws, starting public transport rail projects, creating a new highway, and getting serious about traffic ticketing.
It's all good.
I knew I saw this back in around 2000/2001. Talk about a dupe...news of another city deploying GPSs, or tower tracking, in phones for traffic monitoring has made slashdot almost every year since the first NextTel phones had GPSs in them.
It happens with regularity. If satnav systems simply recorded their average speed and learned how fast they were going they could make more intelligent routing decisions.
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For the five of us on /. from Bangalore, we are all set! How about something for S. California, which has some of the worst traffic in the world?
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Canadian Rogers cable tv/ISP/mobile phone provider is working on the same solution as I understand.
You can't handle the truth.
Isn't the traffic always congested in Bangalore?
How come the map doesn't show all the American call center's and outsourcing firms? This is Bangalore, after all!
Some time ago, it was reported that Bangalore could lose jobs because the software shops were fed up with the congestion there. Infosys opened 1000s of new jobs in other cities (http://bangalorebuzz.blogspot.com/2006/01/infy-to -expand-outside-bangalore.html). Maybe Bangalore decided they'd better pay some attention to the problem.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-206366785 2598904740
How is this different from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc?
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A bit off-topic, but have you heard they're going to be tracking cell-phone signals to monitor traffic patterns? It's amazing! Why doesn't Slashdot ever accept a story on the subject?
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You can read more here:
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
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/10/23372
There, that's better. Hopefully, one day they'll come to their senses, and post a story or two on the subject.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Around Milwaukee Wisconsin we have those magnetic field loops embedded in the pavement. When a vehicle passes over several of these in a row, the speed can be estimated for all traffic in the lane.
Sounds like a pretty good idea to me. The phone company _already has_ the data, so if they were to release non identifying information (location, direction, speed) for each unit there are no huge privacy concerns - relative to the benefits. As someone else mentioned bikes could be a problem - not to mention pedestrians and old guys sitting on benches. The sheer number of data points could be a useful pointer to whether it's a traffic jam or a bunch of people walking... Some smarts could likely filter the data into classes of movement.
This isn't a new idea, just first to be implemented. I remember reading about this technique about a year or two ago, they wanted to do it in California however people objected because of privacy issues and such, also I think at&t, cingular or both didn't want to participate...
Anyone remember the article?
Those blue "cameras" about the size of a shoebox on a pole with a little aerial, usually one pointing each way, are Trafficmaster cameras. They work in a fairly ingenious way. There's a camera that identifies only the middle few digits of a number plate (solving CPU horsepower and privacy concerns by simply not bothering to read a whole plate), and transmits that back to a central point along with the vehicle speed and a timestamp. The next camera to spot the plate transmits back the data and the timestamp, and the system can work out a map of vehicle speeds across a given stretch of road.
Note that for various legal reasons, the camera isn't allowed to record or identify an image of the car, or the full numberplate, and also for legal reasons the data can't be used for law enforcement. The US doesn't really have anything like the UK's Data Protection Act, which would make attempting to retain data from these an expensive legal minefield.
Though it hasn't been implemented yet, this was already planned in the UK with TomTom and Vodafone teaming up. The Register has the article: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/10/27/tomtom_cel lular_traffic_tech/
My hobby: Standing by fast moving roads, talking on a cell phone.
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