Smart cars, smart roads - traffic-management systems - includes related article on an upcoming Intelligent Transportation Society of American conference

Nation's Business, Feb, 1996 by Julie Candler

Picture yourself in the worst traffic jam you can imagine. An accident on the freeway at rush hour makes it bumper-to-bumper for miles ahead, and it takes hours to cover the ground you normally could breeze by in a few minutes.

What if being trapped in that kind of gridlock wasn't just your worst nightmare but happened every day?

For small businesses which re on the nation's road system to deliver goods and services quickly, economically, and safely, such a scenario would carry heavy costs not only in terms of aggravation but also for the bottom line. And the scenario may not be that far from becoming reality.

Transportation experts forecast that the use of cars and trucks will increase at a rate that far outstrips the current road system's ability to handle the traffic. The Federal Highway Administration, part of the Department of transportation, expects that freeway congestion will quadruple by 2005. And "nonfreeway congestion will double" by then, says David Benson, a senior consult, ant at SRI International, a research and consulting organization in Menlo Park, Calif. "In California alone, more than 300,000 work hours are lost every day in traffic congestion," he adds.

So why not simply build enough roads and highways to handle the load? Many transportation experts and economists say that would be too expensive, would use too much undeveloped land, and would lead to increased pollution.

In addition, such a solution may be too little, too late. "The gap between demand for roads and what's available is widening so fast that there is nobody with enough money to build roads that fast," says Richard Magnuson, founding director of Image Sensing Systems. based in St. Paul, Minn., is participating in a pilot program to demonstrate how the use of technology can reduce traffic problems at the Summer Olympics this year in Atlanta.

In lieu of building more roads, those working to keep traffic from grinding to a crawl are turning more and more to technology. The increased focus has already led to some advances that just a few years ago would have seemed closer to science fiction than to fact, and more space-age systems designed to move traffic better are on the horizon. As Secretary of transportation Federico Pena says, "America is undergoing a technological revolution in transportation as we apply advanced communications, electronics, and computer technologies to surface-transportation systems."

At the forefront of this revolution is the Intelligent transportation Society of America, or ITS America, a public-private partnership with more than 1,5W members from industry, government, and academia. The nonprofit scientific and educational organization, based in Washington, D.C., was founded in 1991 as the Intelligent Vehicle-Highway Society of America and has 22 state chapters. Its goal is to improve the efficiency and safety of surface transportation by adapting the technologies developed for and used in space and defense programs and in aviation.

ITS America envisions a future in which, among other things, motorists will be able to cruise at high speeds on Highways containing computer chips that can relay information to drivers through communications devices in their cars. Some lanes will even be automated, with a combination of magnetic pegs in the roadway and radar-equipped, programmable cruise-control systems in vehicles allowing for safe, "hands-free" travel.

In addition, traffic-management centers receiving video signals from cameras along highways will be able to update motorists continually - via variable-message signs, radio channels for travelers' advisories, and communications devices in cars - about accidents, traffic snarls, and the best or alternate routes to take.

All this will cut fuel consumption, improve air quality, reduce accidents, and increase America's productivity and competitiveness, ITS America maintains.

Many members of the organization, which works closely with the Department of Transportation and the FHA, are small businesses that have government and private-sector subcontracts for work on about 250 pilot projects for the federal government's Intelligent transportation System program, also known as ITS.

The organization, in its strategic plan, forecasts that 80 percent of an estimated $220 billion to be allocated to ITS projects over the next 20 years will be spent in the private sector.

Major categories of projects include advanced traveler-information systems; advanced traffic-management systems; advanced vehicle-control and safety systems; commercial-vehicle operations; emergency management; electronic toll payment; and public-transportation operations.

One of the small businesses involved in the ITS pilot projects is Image Sensing Systems, the St. Paid firm that will participate in a 17-week project - called the Traveler Information Showcase - connected with the Summer Games in Atlanta.

The 40-employee company, which was formed just four years ago in anticipation of the move toward so-called intelligent transportation, will provide 56 image-processing devices for use with 300 overhead video cameras to detect accidents and tie-ups and provide other traffic information during the Olympics. The device, called the Autoscope Wide-Area Vehicle-Detection System, was designed by Image Sensing Systems and is produced for it by an outside firm. More than 2,000 Autoscopes are in use worldwide.