That Little Voice Telling You To Skip I-95? It's Your Car

Mistele predicted that in five years, "everybody will have ubiquitous access to this information and will know the best time to leave in the morning and the best route to take home."

IntelliOne, an Atlanta-based company, has been operating a cellphone-based test in Tampa for 18 months and hopes to launch its service in other markets -- including Washington -- by year's end. And, yes, the company is interested in taking up Kaine's challenge.

Chief Executive Ronald Herman said national package delivery companies searching for ways to save fuel and cut time stuck in traffic are accelerating its research.

"Because the system would know your destination, it could tell you that taking an early exit onto an alternative road with four lights will actually save 15 minutes," he said. "That is where the level of data is."

Still others say using toll-tag readers to track car speeds is another promising approach. Additional tag readers placed over highways would read E-ZPass transponders without deducting a toll. Tracking the time it took a tag to travel between two readers would help determine cars' speeds. Sixty mph, no problem. Ten mph, time to find a different route.

Part of the Kaine program's mission is to learn how to make the Washington area's traffic quagmire a laboratory for new technology and get local companies involved.

A recent summit in Northern Virginia called by Homer and Aneesh P. Chopra, the state's technology secretary, tried to bring private-sector and government officials together. The $20 million, which faces an uphill battle in the General Assembly, would be a small inducement. The money would be split between Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads, and regional technology groups would determine which firms got it.

In addition to improving commuters' options, having real-time information could also help government traffic planners tweak roadways and signals to pack more vehicles on each mile of highway.

"It all goes back to the data. You need to know quantitatively what is going on out there," said Catherine McGhee, co-director of the Smart Travel Laboratory at the University of Virginia.

"We can't tell you to take Route 50 because I-66 is blocked, because we're not confident of our data on 50," McGhee said. "Our goal is to tell you there's a problem and here's what to do about it -- like take Metro, or bus number 37, and your travel time will be this. Or go to the telecommuting place at the intersection of X and Y."

She said traffic data could be used to better control highway ramp merges, a major cause of jams. By using sensors monitoring highway flow, ramp signals could be timed to send the maximum number of vehicles onto highways without stopping traffic -- although that approach could leave hundreds of drivers waiting on on-ramps for long stretches.

McGhee said real-time information could also be used to adjust speed limits to create "artificial slowdowns" that, counterintuitively, would keep traffic moving faster. Traffic moving constantly at 45 mph is better than that speeding along stretches of open road, then ending in bottlenecks. Once traffic stops, it takes a lot longer to get going again.

Because 50 to 60 percent of congestion is caused by accidents and other incidents, being able to quickly find out where and when traffic is stopped would make quicker responses possible.

Better information can also help planners time traffic signals on arterial roads and respond to changing conditions, such as keeping shoulder lanes open later during days of heavy traffic.

"Flipping the switch once you have the data is the easy part," Chopra said. "Getting the info is the hard part."