By: Glenn Pascall
Puget Sound Business Journal
July 18, 2008
Link to original op-ed
Gas tax revenues are in decline due to higher fuel efficiency, and gas consumption in the U.S. has fallen due to surging prices at the pump. The result is a looming shortfall in federal highway and transit funds, which means the government will be unable to meet its obligations to provide revenue to the states as early as next year.
One response is to do a better job of targeting money, Slade Gorton said at Cascadia Center’s West Coast workshop on tolling and traffic management last month in Seattle.
The former U.S. senator is now serving as co-chair of the National Transportation Policy Project, whose mission is to identify priorities for funding and to support the transition to alternative fuels.
It’s likely the commission will recommend that Congress should “direct funding based on measures of effectiveness rather than using earmarks and formulas unrelated to the efficiency of spending,” Gorton said at the conference.
Adding technology will help, too. As columnist Joseph Kraft observed: “When facing a problem created by technology, apply more technology.”
New “telematic” systems can optimize existing capacity as a cost-effective alternative to building new capacity.
Telematic products - which combine mobile telecom systems, on-board vehicle infrastructure and advanced toll collection systems - “can talk to each other, trade information, and reconcile data gaps and discrepancies,” said Jack Opiola of Booz Allen Hamilton consultants.
This creates “a potential leap in the quality of traveler information” and makes “highways fluid,” said Opiola, a telematics pioneer based in London.
This reduces congestion, “which degrades the environment as well as personal mobility,” Opiola noted.
To function well, however, telematic systems need better information, said Brian Mistele, head of Inrix, a provider of real-time, historical and predictive traffic information.
Until now, the emphasis has been on traffic incident information gathered through visual observation. “But, however vivid such reports might be, they lacked an assessment of the impact on traffic conditions - the duration and severity of delay,” said Mistele, formerly of Microsoft.
Technology is rapidly changing the situation. Inrix traffic monitors now survey some 800,000 miles of U.S. roads on a real-time basis. These “smart roads” collect and record data that are analyzed to measure current impacts and make future predictions, providing data supporting the telematics that Opiola described.
Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are not only convenient, their use is “essential in providing adequate capacity at a time of constrained resources and growing demand,” says Randy Iwasaki, chief deputy director of California’s Department of Transportation (Cal-Trans).
Iwasaki added the safety dimension to the mix of benefits ITS can provide. Safety is the top-rated priority in transportation plans for California, Washington and other states. Iwasaki cited 43,000 highway deaths a year in the U.S. “Compare that with 58,000 American deaths in ten years of the Vietnam War. Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for people in this country between the ages of 2 and 38,” he noted.
A leader in vehicle infrastructure integration (VII), Iwasaki described a major safety application of these new systems: collision avoidance at intersections, including “lane-keeping” technologies that include automatic turn-signal activation.
Safety features combined with travel information can enable users “to make informed decisions about modes and routes,” said Iwasaki, and predicted that “the next generation of systems will imbed GPS and other VII in cell phones.”
Cal-Trans is putting in a system designed to “empower the connected traveler” regardless of vehicle type, said Greg Larson, chief of traffic operations research at Cal-Trans.
The initiative, known as Safe Trip 21, “creates an information gateway” that connects consumer mobile devices, on-board vehicle technology, and roadside infrastructure for greater safety, mobility and flexibility. Cell-phone industry giant Nokia just bought travel map leader Navteq and is a project partner, Larson noted.
How quickly will these advances become widespread? Since the advent of the personal computer, three types of human behavior have been observed in response to new technology: early adopters, mainstream users, and laggards. Now, VII is replicating the pattern.
Enthusiasts are already moving from GPS to real-time traffic information. Mainstream drivers are intrigued but not fully engaged. Laggards, to the extent they are aware of developments, fear becoming “road kill on the information highway” - disempowered by being technology-averse.
Much of the challenge will be resolved by imbedded systems that enable smart cars to talk with smart roads in ways that don’t require driver decisions. The ultimate evolution will be electronic guideways that set vehicle speeds and spacing, thereby doubling or even tripling roadway capacity as measured by vehicle use per hour.
Does this mean no new construction will be needed? Not quite. Obsolete roadway design, deteriorating structures and specific choke points will still require relief, especially in rapidly growing locations.
Next week: How to pay for such investments in an era of traditional revenue sources that are sharply declining relative to construction costs.
Glenn Pascall's column appears regularly in the Puget Sound Business Journal
