IBM on Wednesday announced a collaborative project to develop an intelligent transportation system that is expected to help commuters avoid traffic jam and enable transportation agencies to better understand, predict and manage traffic flow, Xinhua reported.
The Smarter Traveler Research Initiative, collaborated with the California Department of Transportation and California Center for Innovative Transportation, a research institute at the University of California, Berkeley, is designed to help drivers plan their commutes before leaving work or home, rather than discover what has happened and is being reported, IBM said in a press release.
The project will use Traffic Prediction Tool, developed by IBM, to continuously collect and analyze traffic data generated from existing sensors in roads, toll booths, bridges and intersections, and then combines data with locations based on GPS sensors in users' cell phones to learn their preferred travel days and routes.
Alerts are then automatically delivered via email or text message on the status of the driver's typical commute before the trip begins, which eliminates potential driver distraction once the trip is in progress, said IBM.
With this new traffic analytic technology, transportation agencies and city planners are also expected to proactively design, manage and optimize transportation systems to more seamlessly handle the ever-increasing traffic that results from population growth and increasing urbanization.
IBM said the system has been working well on several IBM employees for several months and is ready for broader testing. It did not reveal when the system will be available to the public.
Currently, U.S. drivers can seek traffic information from 511 transformation hotline, GPS, traffic websites as well as radio and TV reports. But relevant updates on how to avoid congestion often reach commuters when they are already stuck in traffic.
According to statistics from Texas Transportation Institute, U. S. commuters waste an average of a week's worth of time, 28 gallons of gas and 808 U.S. dollars in a year due to the inability to avoid traffic congestion.
In San Jose, hub of Silicon Valley, drivers waste a cumulative of 10 million more annual hours sitting in traffic jams and suffer a 15 percent higher commute delay per peak-time traveler.