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On Demand Traffic Reports | |||||||||||||||||
I spend a lot of time driving in Los Angeles and it's very frustrating to be stuck in traffic. It's even more frustrating when you don't know what's causing the problem, aren't able to get any information on possible alternative routes, or can't find out when the slowdown might be over. You can tune into an AM radio station for a traffic report, but there are two problems: 1. They only broadcast traffic reports at intervals of six to ten minutes. That's a long time to wait before fining out what's going on. 2. They attempt to cover traffic conditions over a very very large area. The trafic reports might spent half othe time reporting on an accident that's 50 miles or more away from you. So you get lots of irrelevant information and often not enough informtion about what's happening on your freeway. The idea is to link GPS with a datacasting network. The datacasting network is providing detailed, up-to-the-minute traffic information for the entire area, coded by freeway and map sector. Your car has a receiver inside it that receives the datastream and filters out all irrelevant information based on your current position and heading (by referencing your location and heading as reported by the GPS system.) The system stores the relevant information locally in the car. The information coming over the datacasting feed is not audio; it's telemetry. The system in the car has a button that the driver can push at any time. When the driver pushes the button, the system uses a speech synthesizer to report on traffic conditions ahead on the freeway the driver is using. The system will automatically mute the car radio or CD player so that the driver can hear the traffic report easily. There are very large numbers of people who would pay $20 per month for a service like this, plus $500 for the in-car equipment. Also, delivery companies (Fedex, UPS, etc), taxi drivers, shuttle companies, police, ambulances, fire trucks, and so on could make excellent use of such a system to improve productivity and get their vehicles where they need to be faster. This could be taken further: Create a deluxe system that remembes your routine routes (like a commuting route) and then reports on freeway conditions on your presumed route (based on time of day and your current heading and location.) Hugh R Heinsohn
hughrheinsohn, Nov 20 2003
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Interesting concept.
You state that many would pay $$ for such a device, presumably in larger cities with gridlock. Is this a researched / documented fact, or a gut reaction?
There are several spinoffs one could do....if the primary route is gridlocked, suggest alternate routes, estimated travel time between start/end points of predetermined routes, determine lunch / evening restaurant options based on travel time and traffic, etc.
A series of video/webcams across the city tied into a system could also provide visual estimation of traffic volume and speed.
Methinks the infrastructure to have real time information that is also route specific is relatively high.
Fire Departments, Police, and some Ambulance services have a 24/7 staff of dispatchers who are continually aware of street conditions and traffic, and route trucks when necessary. They are not too concerned in most cities of gridlock, because of their ability to use sirens and flashing lights. (New York/Chicago/L.A. may be exceptions)
I am intrigued.
Pilgrim's comments are well taken.
At this time, metropolitan broadast facilities often get theeir traffic info from a vairety of paid, pooled sources. That is, there are companies that specialize in providing traffic information that the TV and radio stations then use to broadcast their traffic updates.
In Los Angeles (and presumably in most other large cities with traffic problems), the state government uses in-road sensors to monitor average traffic speeds and to track accident reports. You can view this information on a variety of web sites; this is real-time information produced by a network of traffic sensors.
I think there are hundreds of thousands of people who would pay $20 per month (or possibly more) for this service - or who would convince their employer that the company should pay for it in order to improve productivity. This is a gut reaction not backed up by any research.
Allow subscribers to update the traffic report by having their GPS unit call in their position every 30 seconds (via the cellphone network?). The master computer would figure out what road you are on and what speed you are going. They would pool this information with all the other drivers and thereby get up to the minute coverage on a wide number of streets. This information would be collated, and pushed out to subscribers using the methods you already proposed.