Ron Heft wants to build the information highway. No, he doesn't work for Al Gore, but he wants to untangle traffic in the world's biggest cities, and bits are his tool of choice.
"It's getting more difficult to build more roads," said Heft, principal intelligent transport systems engineer for the Sunnyvale, California-based Navigation Technologies.
NavTech, a developer of digital cartographic databases, is among a host of organizations working with governments and corporations in cities throughout the world to build smarter transportation systems.
Transport ministries in countries throughout the world have a wealth of maps and collect data on highway volume. At the same time, municipal agencies maintain information on bus routes, monitor bus transit and the timing of traffic lights.
NavTech and other companies want to tap this information, organize it, and make it available in a form that is accessible to travelers. For example, engineers on a project in Phoenix, Arizona, are working to develop a data system that links together all that city's urban transportation systems to allow for the exchange of information on bus routes, bus schedules and traffic patterns.
This information could be broadcast publicly to citizens via cable television or computer, allowing commuters to better assess their options.
But information swapping will go beyond public transportation systems. Testing and development under way at UC Berkeley will make cars more communicative with each other and the road. Steve Shladover, deputy director of partners for advanced transit and highways for the Institute of Transportation Studies, said his group is working on some 60 projects aimed at keeping down the number of new lanes in highways.
Shladover said cars will feature sensors to gather information from magnets implanted in highways and signals sent via wireless communications from nearby cars. The key to this vision - straight out of vintage Popular Science - is software that can process information from all the different inputs to help maneuver a car through maneuvers such as lane changes.
Shladover said this approach will improve the throughput of roads - perhaps to double their capacity. All of this in the name of getting the most out of the roads that exist - a problem faced by governments of industrial countries such as Japan and Thailand.
