COLUMN ONE : Smart Way to Unclog Roadways : Futurists in 1939 dreamed of radar-linked cars zipping safely along uncongested highways. Today, auto makers, faced with growing competition, are testing systems built of space-age technology.
Long before slow-go, gawkers block and SigAlert had crept into the lingo; long before drivers had memorized the schedule for the Metro Traffic radio reports and long, long before commuters were forced to conduct business by cellular phone from the middle of a traffic jam, future-thinking engineers in Detroit had envisioned a way to avoid this hassle.
Their vision, unveiled at General Motors’ “Futurama” exhibit at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, showed tightly spaced chains of cars, zipping along roadways at near maximum speeds. These cars wouldn’t collide because they were linked by radar-like electronic communication devices that allowed them to relay their positions to the rest of the pack and, thus, maintain safe spacing.
The effect of this high speed, virtually bumper-to-bumper traffic was to move many more vehicles over the same roads in the same time. And the futurists projected that this would be the reality of the mid-1960s.
Although delayed, this idea has not been lost. Companies such as GM, Ford and Motorola are outfitting so-called “smart cars” with aerospace-developed--and now war-tested--technology. And, from Orlando to Chicago to San Diego, projects are underway or planned to test new systems in an effort to unclog the nation’s roads.
Much is at stake. Besides easing congestion, application of the new technology can help increase auto safety and reduce air pollution and oil consumption. It also can help bolster the United States’ sliding competitive position in worldwide auto and electronics markets by keeping U.S. cars equal to their Japanese and German rivals in the latest technology.
Already, Japanese and European auto makers are further along in developing the sort of navigation devices and communication services that are about to be tested in U.S. experiments beginning this year.
In Berlin, drivers are trying out a radio broadcast system that instantaneously signals traffic problems to specially equipped cars. And many more freeways in both Japan and Germany are equipped with roadway sensors to feed information into mapping systems that are optional equipment on some German and Japanese luxury cars.
“U.S. auto makers are in danger of losing their remaining automobile market share to foreign competitors if we fail to keep up with the Europeans and Japanese,” said Steven Shladover, technical director of the Advanced Technology for the Highway program operated by UC Berkeley. “If American consumers have a choice between a smart Japanese car and a dumb American car, even more will buy Japanese cars.”
Although global competitiveness is important, improved driver safety and reduced traffic congestion are the primary motivations among both auto makers and public officials.
“The theory is that before we spend billions to build more freeways and streets, we ought to make sure that we are making the best possible use of the capacity we already have,” said Edwin Rowe, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, which oversees a city where traffic congestion grew at a nation-leading rate of 15% annually during the 1980s.
There is no assurance, however, that drivers will accept high-tech gadgetry in their cars. Remember the synthesized voices that warned of low fuel tanks and open doors? They bombed in the early 1980s. Subsequent efforts, including Oldsmobile’s and Pontiac’s cockpit-style dashboard display, have not been big sellers.
Still, engineers are betting that ever-building traffic congestion and high costs of building new mass transit systems will spur consumer acceptance.
Roadway Sensors
Most of the smart-car systems require the installation of tiny, computerized traffic-measuring sensors in or along roadways. But that’s only half of it. Auto makers must include electronic brains in their automobiles to allow the cars to “talk” to other cars as well as to the “traffic central” command post receiving the information transmitted by the roadway sensors.
By helping drivers avoid colliding with each other and find the least congested routes, these systems could double or even triple the capacity of the nation’s urban freeways within two decades, engineers calculate. In addition, similar systems in trucks and emergency vehicles could speed deliveries, ambulance response times and other trips where time is critical.
Ultimately, engineers believe, with enough “smarts” in roads and cars, drivers would be able to pre-program their destinations--as they would a VCR or microwave oven--when they enter a freeway. Then the car would travel on auto-pilot.
The microprocessor revolution and military buildup of the last decade has been a big boon to the technology that is needed. Most of the systems now planned for cars are derived directly from the radar and computer-aided vision built into the “smart bombs” so effective in the Persian Gulf War. And advances in computer technology have lowered prices to within the range of consumer budgets.
Now, facing mounting traffic-related economic, environmental and social pressures, the nation’s transportation officials say they are more ready than ever to make the dreams of 1939 come true.
The electronic solution won’t be cheap. The Federal Highway Administration projects that it will take an investment of $30 billion to $35 billion over the next two decades to install “smarts” into about 15,000 miles of metropolitan-area highways throughout the country. This cost estimate includes only the sensors and communication systems that would be operated by highway authorities. For the systems to work, auto makers must develop, and consumers must buy, the other half of the system: electronically outfitted cars.
Fatal Flaw?
However, talk of smart cars and intelligent roads strikes many as little more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
“These systems are sexy and they attract a lot of money and attention, but in some ways they get us deeper into the soup” by perpetuating the “one-man, one-car” syndrome and avoiding such solutions as car pooling or mass transit, said Ronnie Lipschutz, a UC Santa Cruz professor and fellow at the Pacific Institute, a Berkeley environmental think tank. “The smart car is a technology that doesn’t address the fundamental societal problems of traffic, congestion and driving patterns.”
Proponents of the high-tech roadways respond that these systems--not mass-transit projects--represent the most realistic solution for freeway congestion in today’s increasingly sprawling, suburban communities.
“What choices do we really have?” asked Shladover, the UC Berkeley transportation engineer. “We can restrict demand for the freeways by imposing high tolls or gas taxes, but restrictions on suburban living are pretty unattractive to most people. We have the technology to provide another solution.”
Just how do these smart cars and intelligent highways work?
Perhaps it’s easiest to think first of the engineers’ ultimate vision: a car, such as one that will be tested near San Diego, that would lock its driver into a fast-traveling freeway platoon and take him where he wants to go. After the driver selected his destination, the car--using up-to-the-minute traffic flow information relayed by roadway traffic sensors to the car’s on-board navigation computer--would automatically pick the least-congested route.
For example, if a driver wanted to get from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica, the usual route would be the Santa Monica Freeway, or Interstate 10. But what if an accident near the La Brea exit occurred while the driver was just a few miles from the scene? Before he could get caught in the jam, his car would be told of the incident by the traffic command central and would automatically exit the freeway, finding the least congested alternative route based on the calculations performed by its computerized mapping system for both the freeway as well as adjacent major streets.
Such a system, engineers say, isn’t likely for 50 or more years--if ever. But in the interim, pieces of it will become available.
Already, consumers can buy a rudimentary computerized mapping system that plots a course to guide them from point to point--a kind of electronic Thomas Guide. But these systems, the best known of which is made by Etak in the Silicon Valley, currently are not connected to any information about existing traffic conditions. So, they leave a driver--under the very best of circumstances--to listen to sometimes outdated radio traffic reports and guess whether getting off the freeway and on to nearby streets is better than sticking it out on the freeway.
However, advances are on the horizon.
Engineers say experimental technology exists today to send “real time” traffic flow information, collected by roadway sensors, to cars equipped with mapping systems that can give their operators a series of options for bypassing congestion. The most advanced systems, they say, would even tell drivers to stay off the freeway and take an alternative course before they leave their driveway.
About a dozen smart car and highway experiments are being pursued throughout the nation, and California, with much of the nation’s worst congestion, is the primary guinea pig.
Freeway Test
Project Pathfinder, a nine-month-old experiment along the Santa Monica Freeway--which routinely carries more than 330,000 vehicles a day along its eight lanes--is the nation’s first to test how drivers would use real-time traffic flow information in their daily commutes.
In the $1.7-million project, 25 GM cars have been outfitted with special on-board mapping and communication systems and drivers have been ordered to travel at peak commute hours along the 13-mile stretch between the Harbor and San Diego freeways.
The drivers are alerted to traffic problems--both on the freeway and on major surface streets for up to one mile north and south of it--as they occur, and are free to select alternative routes based on this data. Similar projects are scheduled to start later this year in Orlando, Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Other pilot projects include the “platooning” experiment set to begin within a few months near San Diego. In that experiment, a four-car caravan will travel--at increasingly higher speeds and closer intervals--to test how swiftly, tightly and safely packs of cars can run. These caravans will be constantly linked by radar communication to keep spacing even and safe, despite changes in speed and acceleration rates.
Just as engineers are installing intelligent sensors into the roadways, Detroit auto makers are developing early pieces of technology to communicate with those sensors--as well as other autos.
Efforts of the Big Three auto makers are closely guarded, but GM--largely because of its acquisition of Hughes Aircraft--is widely considered to be far ahead of its competitors in developing smart systems.
Sources say Hughes and GM engineers are actively working on several advanced systems, most based on radar and other detection and navigation systems developed for the military.
These include the “collision avoidance,” or “near obstacle detection system,” that alerts drivers to obstacles in their path. Depending on where sensors are placed, the driver can be told of objects in front, to the side or to the rear of the vehicle. The systems, developed from those installed in military and civilian aircraft, are seen as a potential aid to drivers making lane changes, passing on freeways--or even backing up in their own driveways.
Also in the advanced development stages is a vision-enhancing system patterned after that used in military vehicles at night or in hazardous weather. The system uses infrared technology to change heat into images that appear on a computer screen in the car’s dashboard. GM engineers estimate that the system would allow a driver at night to “see” a person standing 1,600 feet away, more than five times the distance under normal circumstances.
“These are peaceful applications of military technology,” says Gene Farber, an intelligent vehicle program specialist at Ford, which is experimenting with similar devices but is not believed to be as far along as GM. Chrysler, industry sources say, is considerably behind both Ford and GM.
However, sensing the early stages of a potentially billion-dollar market, several other electronics companies are jumping in. For example, Motorola, which started as a maker of car radios in the 1920s, is developing a computerized mapping system for auto makers. Demonstration models are expected by the end of this year and full-scale production would be in place in time for the 1994 automobile model year.
The cost of these new high-tech options is a major consideration to all the manufacturers. According to early estimates, the vast majority of car buyers would be unlikely to accept mapping, radar and other options costing more than $2,000 each. However, if the price dropped to $1,000, perhaps as many as 15% of the buyers of cars costing $20,000 and more would take one or more of the high-tech options, a Chrysler engineer estimated.
Detroit Trails Japan
Despite the interest in Detroit and among electronics makers, the United States is far behind auto makers in Europe and Japan.
Transportation officials say the United States is behind its global auto competitors for many of the same reasons that have plagued U.S. industry in the last two decades: shortsighted technology investment practices, unwillingness of industry members to work cooperatively with each other in experimental-phase development work, and industry’s failure to lobby the government to install the necessary expensive infrastructure.
So far, engineers estimate, U.S. auto makers as a group have invested the equivalent of more than 200 man years (one engineer working full-time for one year) developing smart auto systems. However, this staffing is said to be a fraction of what the Japanese and Europeans have devoted to these projects.
Furthermore, university and government researchers complain, U.S. auto makers are more interested in developing high-tech systems that enhance driver safety and comfort, not necessarily systems that work with smart highways to ease traffic congestion.
European auto makers are widely believed to be the furthest along in developing a coordinated smart transportation system. More than $1 billion has been set aside for two experimental projects. A group of a dozen European auto makers has committed $850 million to Project Prometheus, a research consortium. And the European Community has committed $150 million for additional pilot studies.
Meanwhile, Japanese auto makers have been selling computerized mapping systems that talk to drivers, telling which street to take and where to turn. These systems have the capacity to communicate with “traffic central” command posts--and in advanced experiments, some already are. The devices are available in some luxury Japanese cars sold only in Japan. And despite a cost of between $2,800 and $6,500, engineers estimate that 40% of the luxury car buyers take the option.
Despite that original vision from GM engineers more than 50 years ago, U.S. auto makers and highway engineers are playing catch-up to their global competitors.
“We’re lagging behind,” said James Constanzo, director of the newly formed Intelligent Vehicle and Highway Society of America, a Washington-based association of auto makers and highway engineers. “The Japanese started on this 15 or 20 years ago; the Europeans followed quickly. We just got organized and focused two years ago. We’ve got to move quickly if we’re to catch up.”
SMART CARS AND HIGHWAYS
Test programs are being conducted in Los Angeles over the next three years.
1. A sensor on the highway reads the traffic patterns and sends the information to the control center.
2. The control center beams the information to the satellite.
3. The satellite receives the information and transmits directly to the car.
4. The driver receives information about the traffic ahead.
