Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 21, 1991 TAG: 9103210431
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK LAYMAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RESTON LENGTH: Long
A wreck on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge . . . traffic backed up for a mile on the Capital Beltway . . . another wreck on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway . . . . "Most of these accidents are caused by hydroplaning. Just back down on the speed."
Welcome to metropolitan Washington, where getting from here to there during rush hour is like creeping through a shopping mall parking lot on the day after Thanksgiving. And that's despite designated lanes for car pools and buses, birds-eye-view traffic reports and never-ending highway construction.
It was an appropriate setting for the inaugural meeting of IVHS America, a consortium of industries, universities and local, state and federal transportation officials who are trying to make "smart cars" and "smart highways" a reality.
IVHS America - the acronym stands for Intelligent Vehicle/Highway Systems - didn't even exist a year ago. But this week's four-day meeting attracted 450 people from 30 states and eight countries. General Motors, Ford Motor Co., Toyota and Mitsubishi were there. So were Allied-Signal, AT&T, Motorola, 3M, Westinghouse and other auto parts, communications, electronics and computer companies.
Even though some of the best-known speakers on the schedule canceled - notably Secretary of Transportation Samuel Skinner, Gov. Douglas Wilder and some congressmen who, it was said, were busy working on a new federal highway bill - those who attended didn't seem too disappointed.
For them, it was like being in Philadelphia during the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787.
"What you see here are the founding fathers" of smart-car and smart-highway technology, said Antoine Hobeika, director of Virginia Tech's Center for Transportation Research.
"This will open a new chapter in IVHS development," predicted the president of IVHS America, Lester Lamm.
"IVHS" is the catch-all for a variety of projects, from the electronic highway message signs of today to computer-driven, high-speed cars of the 21st century. The new technology is being used to speed travel, reduce traffic congestion and improve safety.
The acronym was coined only a couple of years ago at the University of Michigan, but the IVHS concept isn't new. At the 1939 World's Fair, for example, General Motors showed a film about the future of transportation that foreshadowed some of the projects being talked of today.
Still, in this country at least, the public has been slow to recognize the potential of IVHS.
"There is a lack of awareness . . . and skepticism" about IVHS, Lamm admitted. "People need to know that this is not a Buck Rogers scheme."
Europe and Japan got the jump on the United States in IVHS research and development. To catch up, this country needs something like the Manhattan Project, which gave birth to the atomic bomb, or the space program of the 1960s, which put people on the moon.
That will require money. The Federal Highway Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Urban Mass Transportation Administration are requesting a total of $60 million for IVHS research and development in the 1992 federal budget, according to "Inside IVHS," a biweekly newsletter.
And it will require an unprecedented partnership among universities, industries and government.
Making sure that happens is IVHS America's mission.
"This will be a paradigm for high-tech programs in the 21st century," said James Constantino, IVHS America's executive director.
The two best-known IVHS projects in the United States - Pathfinder, in Los Angeles, and TravTek, in Orlando, Fla. - are products of those sorts of partnerships.
In Pathfinder, drivers of 25 specially equipped cars get up-to-date information about accidents, traffic congestion, highway construction and alternate routes as they travel a 14-mile stretch of the Santa Monica Freeway. A control center monitors traffic on the freeway and relays information to the cars, which have navigation systems and dashboard computer screens that display electronic maps.
Pathfinder is a joint project of the California Department of Transportation, GM, the Federal Highway Administration and electronics and computer companies. Related research is being done at the Institute of Transportation Studies at Berkeley.
Testing of TravTek is to begin this fall in five counties in and around Orlando. One hundred cars - 75 of them Avis rental cars - will be equipped with dashboard computer screens that display maps of the Orlando area. The maps will show traffic hazards, travel routes and information about gas stations, hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions. As in Pathfinder, a control center will monitor traffic and relay information to the cars.
The American Automobile Association, one of the partners in TravTek, will pre-qualify drivers for the Avis cars. The other 25 specially equipped cars will be leased to high-mileage drivers.
Universities - notably the University of California at Berkeley, Texas A&M, the University of Michigan, the University of Minnesota and Massachusetts Institute of Technology - are leading the way in IVHS research.
Hobeika wants Virginia Tech to join that group.
State and federal transportation officials and engineers from Ford, General Motors and Lockheed met at Tech last fall to discuss concepts for an IVHS test road that could be built parallel to an expressway linking Blacksburg with Interstate 81. A follow-up meeting is set for April.
Whether or not the test road is built, Hobeika might have found a niche for Tech in IVHS research.
I-81 carries a lot of truck traffic; in the past three years, there have been at least 20 serious truck accidents between Roanoke and Christiansburg. Hobeika said he thinks this is the perfect place to study how electronic message signs, pavement sensors and other IVHS technology could be used to improve truck safety on steep grades and in bad weather.
And, although much of the IVHS research around the country focuses on ways to reduce traffic congestion in big cities, Tech could take another tack and focus on inter-city high-speed highways, he said.
by CNB