Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 19, 1992 TAG: 9201200209
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL ROOS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
UNJAMMING TRAFFIC I
YOU'RE late for work, so you hop in your car and immediately check your dashboard control for a detailed traffic update. Since you decide to take a new route, you call up a map on your electronic console to guide you. You drive along until suddenly an alarm inside the car warns you of a truck about to veer into your fender. You steer to avoid it just in time.Next you encounter a toll booth. No problem: You zip through without stopping to pay. Instead, a code on your car is "read" by an electronic device. You'll receive the bill in the mail next week. Finally, as you pull into the parking lot, a beacon on your dashboard guides you to an empty spot.
If all this sounds preferable to sitting in endless traffic jams, it should. Technologies like these could not only reduce traffic delays but also cut fuel consumption, ease air pollution, lower freight costs and save lives.
A committee that I chaired for the National Research Council concluded recently that high-tech approaches to traffic management are increasingly feasible. Many of the ideas are not new, and components of them have been in use for many years. However, there recently has been a resurgence of interest in finding bold new solutions to our traffic woes. Many concepts have become practical with the spectacular evolution and declining costs of computers and telecommunications. Meanwhile, it has become increasingly difficult to solve transportation problems by building new roads.
Computers have transformed our work places, but have had relatively little impact on our road and transit systems. By applying the tools of the Information Revolution, we might improve travel dramatically.
Imagine, for example, that vehicles were equipped with sensors and adaptive cruise-control technology enabling them to automatically maintain a constant distance from adjacent vehicles. This would make it possible for vehicles to travel safely only inches apart, like railroad cars. Each lane could thus carry far more vehicles, reducing the need for new roads. Drivers might even be free to read a book or enjoy the scenery during the trip.
Some new technologies might develop as entirely private systems, with firms providing services to subscribers. For example, a traveler-information system could be organized like a cable-television or cellular-telephone service.
Alternatively, new systems might be operated publicly, as are nearly all existing traffic-management services. The best approach may be a partnership in which the government provides some components while private companies provide others.
The recently passed surface-transportation law will greatly ex- pand federal research and development of "Intelligent Vehicle and Highway Systems," and many states are supporting similar efforts. It is becoming possible to visualize a transportation system built upon a new kind of national "information infrastructure," just as construction of the interstate-highway system transformed travel in an earlier era.
A danger is that research funds intended to develop genuinely new ideas may be diverted for more cautious efforts. Public agencies have a natural tendency to stick with familiar approaches and to try to maintain control over traffic management.
Turf concerns are a related problem: Squabbles between highway and transit officials could choke innovations that cut across current boundaries. What's needed is a national program that pursues truly creative ideas, one in which government is organized to accommodate new technologies.
It also is essential that the public and private sectors work together closely. Automakers, electronics manufacturers and others in the private sector must join in meeting this emerging challenge.
Major markets are likely to emerge, in both the United States and abroad, for new kinds of vehicles, electronics and communications. American companies can ill afford to fall behind their counterparts in Europe and Japan, where a great deal of activity already is under way.
Transportation of the future could look vastly different - and better - than it does today. Instead of beating our breasts about our worsening traffic jams, we should use our heads to solve them.
Daniel Roos, director of the Center for Technology Policy and a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, chaired a National Research Council study of advanced vehicle and highway techologies.