Mobile Phones To Beat Traffic Jams
The Age
Tuesday July 22, 2003
As if today's mobile phones weren't crammed with enough features, the famously wired folk of Finland may soon be adding another: traffic congestion deterrent.
Using the signals from individual motorists' mobile phones as beacons, government researchers charted motor vehicle traffic patterns along stretches of road in and around the capital, Helsinki.
The Finnish Technical Research Centre has published an evaluation of the technology and found it useful in helping to prevent traffic jams.
The centre has urged that it be expanded nationally, and has said that the data it obtained would be useful for issuing travel advisories which authorities could transmit for use in television and radio broadcasts.
The system tracks cellular phones that pass between measuring points that are five kilometres apart. The data was displayed on a website during last year's trial, offering real-time information on traffic congestion, the speed of traffic flow and estimated travel times."
You can plan your driving and avoid the worst rush hour, decide on alternate routes, predict when you'll arrive at work and when to heat up the sauna," the Finnish Road Administration said.
Traditional traffic measurements work by simply counting the number of vehicles that pass a given spot on the road, typically using a camera or sensors embedded in the road or on a nearby pole.
By using cellular phones, the system can monitor how long it takes for cars to travel a stretch of road in real time and provide the data instantaneously.
So far, the road administration has developed a formula for calibrating the figures by first watching the real amount of traffic, then comparing it with the data collected from mobile phones. Then, they figure out a weighting factor to correct for the errors. Researchers say at least five per cent of the cars must have a mobile phone in them for the system to provide reliable data. In urban areas, where traffic volumes are great, the system will work reliably with fewer cellular phone users.
Radiolinja, for now the only mobile phone operator in Finland with the service, says it is ready to expand the network and start testing in other European countries.
But there are privacy concerns. The project organisers say the only information recorded by the system is a random number linked to a cellular phone, the distance travelled, and the time it took.
There is no method to later link the identifying number with a particular mobile phone, and an individual's identifying information could not be used in court and would not be provided to authorities.
Net Links :
http://www.tiehallinto.fi/eindex.htm
http://www.radiolinja.fi
http://www.vtt.fi
© 2003 The Age
