I was drawn to this Associated Press article about how the state of Missouri is about to begin a massive intelligent transportation project covering 5,500 miles of state roads. The plan rests on the ability to anonymously track the cell frequencies of mobile phone users as they drive. The phones don’t have to be in use; they only need to be on. The technology being used can determine the speed of a driver as they pass from one cell phone tower to another. Since a majority of Americans use cell phones, the state’s department of transportation will be able to track thousands of people during their morning and afternoon commutes and determine how fast traffic is going in every direction and at every point on the highways and roads.

Why is this cleantech? Well, because when armed with this information the traffic folks have a near-immediate and precise way of knowing how to manage traffic flow. This makes it possible to send traffic notices to highway signs and vehicle dashboards (which more and more cars will have), as well as transmit information about alternative routes before drivers get caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic jams. The faster drivers are able to get to their destination and the less time they spend crawling along a highway means less fuel consumption, less pollution and overall a more efficient commute.

I saw a system like this operating in Calgary, Alberta, a little less than five years ago. A location-based services company called Cell-Loc Inc. used the same approach to track cell phones in commuter vehicles along Calgary freeways. I remember walking into the front reception area of Cell-Loc’s office and seeing a map of the downtown core with red lights moving along major arteries, with each light representing somebody with a cell phone turned on in their car. I was told that these people had no idea they were being tracked, but that it was being done anonymously so there were no apparent ethical problems. That said, it was still a bit creepy.

I’m a major privacy advocate (even co-wrote a book on the issue), so I’m always suspicious of any system that can track people and potentially double as a stealth Big Brother surveillance system. But this, and from what I understand the Missouri system, is truly anonymous. Because signals are literally being plucked from the sky, there’s no need to know who owns the phone, who has the phone subscription, and therefore who it might be driving the vehicle.

That said, it is technically possible to go deeper into the signal and get information about the phone and its service provider, ultimately tracing the signal to the phone owner. But states can easily avoid this controversy by simply designing a system that can never collect this more detailed informaton. All that matters for the traffic folks is that they’ve got a red light moving around a map on a computer screen – the equivalent of a stick they can watch flowing down a river. Track enough sticks, which isn’t a problem now that cell phones are near-ubiquitous, and you’ve got yourself a relatively cheap and accurate way of real-time traffic management and, just as important, long-term transportation planning.

What’s interesting is that the company that won the Missouri contract is Delcan Corp., a Markham, Ontario-based engineering consulting company that specializes in intelligent transportation systems. Richard Mudge, one of the company’s vice presidents, said the project — which will aim to track traffic flow on every road and highway in the state — will create one of the biggest systems of its kind in the world.

Delcan has also been working on a system for Maryland, with a pilot project already under way in Baltimore. Meanwhile, one of its competitors, AirSage Inc., has projects underway in Georgia and Virginia.

Here’s one more thing I like about this approach to traffic management: You don’t need special devices installed in cars or GPS chips put in cell phones, or special scanners installed every 100 metres or so along traffic routes. The infrastructure is there. Most people have cell phones. This is basically just clever software snatching existing data from the air and turning it into useful information. This is cleantech because you don’t have to build a new type of product or structures to achieve the main objective of achieving traffic efficiency.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 17th, 2005 at 9:43 pm and is filed under Main Page. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.