Street Smart : Testing High Tech on the Santa Monica Freeway

THE trouble couldn’t have occurred in a worse place. A blowout stranded the ’79 Chevy on the divider, where the Pomona Freeway splits off the eastbound Santa Monica Freeway. As traffic sped by on both sides of her car, the driver was trying to change the shredded tire.

The situation couldn’t have been more dangerous. A swerving car or the sideswipe of a truck trailer would have turned the freeway into an instant nightmare. In the aftermath, traffic would have been tied up for hours.

A California Highway Patrol motorcycle cop who spotted the hapless motorist radioed for help. Ordinarily, getting a tow truck in to rescue the woman would take half an hour or more, but things were different on this recent day.

A few miles from the scene, one of the CHP’s big, new, blue-and-white tow trucks was cruising the freeway, ready for trouble. Reggie Kober, 36, was at the wheel. His job: to help stranded motorists and clear the freeways of any obstructions--and do it fast. Hearing the officer’s report, Kober grabbed the mike and radioed the CHP dispatcher, “L.A.-15, Tow One responding.”

Flipping on the yellow flashing lights atop his cab, Kober worked the tilt-bed truck through traffic until he saw the disabled car, then maneuvered in behind the Chevy, shielding it. Working swiftly, he winched the car up onto the back of his truck and got it off the freeway. Total elapsed time: less than 10 minutes. Kober changed the tire and sent the driver on her way, all without charge.

Korber works for the CHP’s Freeway Service Patrol, one element of an ambitious $47-million congestion-fighting project called the Santa Monica Smart Corridor Demonstration. For the first time, federal, state and local agencies are working with private-sector research scientists and engineers, pooling their talents and resources to create a real-life application of a nationwide gridlock-fighting Intelligent Vehicle/ Highway System. As pieces of the project such as the Freeway Service Patrol snap into place, they’re providing a glimpse of our smart-traffic future.

The Smart Corridor extends from downtown Los Angeles west 12.3 miles along the Santa Monica Freeway to the San Diego Freeway and includes five surface streets that parallel the freeway--Adams, Washington, Venice, Pico and Olympic boulevards. When the corridor becomes fully operational late next year, a combination of technologies and tactics could increase the Santa Monica Freeway’s carrying capacity by as much as 15% and, at the same time, make better use of the nearby surface streets. If traffic engineers can manage that on the Santa Monica--where traffic counts exceed 335,000 vehicles daily and traffic volume reaches 18,000 vehicles an hour--they should be able to do it anywhere in the country, transportation experts agree. Even if they fail, what they learn will be of use for years to come.

IVHS researchers will be using the corridor to test:

* A communication system that can transmit “real time” traffic information and advice to drivers so that they can react and avoid congestion. It’ll include more message signs on the freeways and additional ones on surface streets, improved links to commercial radio and television stations and even in-car systems that give drivers instant access to traffic-control information.

* Rapid-response teams to quickly clear accidents and handle other on-the-ground problems.

* And most important, a new generation of computer programs that can absorb large amounts of data rapidly and “think” their way through every conceivable combination of traffic problems and responses. All state and city traffic-control centers and police dispatchers will be linked by the operating program. The system will gather data from the surveillance sensors, analyze it, make some decisions automatically, feed critical information to controllers and recommend actions.

The Smart Corridor is taking shape in Los Angeles largely because the the city has advanced traffic-control systems in place. ATSAC, the Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control system put into action for the 1984 Olympics, monitors traffic in downtown intersections lane by lane and can manipulate stoplight timing from its control room under City Hall. Two blocks away, Caltrans’ Freeway Traffic Operations Center controls on-ramp meters and displays on its freeway-condition signs real-time messages based on the information from thousands of freeway sensors. The Caltrans computers and those in the L.A. traffic-control centers are linked and sharing information, using programs to be replaced by the supersmart new programs.

Smart Corridor project developers are in the process of adding additional sensors, cameras,signal controls and message signs on the freeway and the side streets. Right now, for example, signal controls are being installed at 315 intersections on the corridor’s five surface streets. The rapid-response teams have been up and running for a year or more. In the first six months of the CHP’s operation, the tow trucks handled 257 problems, cutting normal response time in half. The Pathfinder, an in-car navigational computer and information system, is also on-line. Twenty-five test cars--Oldsmobile 88s donated by General Motors--are equipped with this system and receive data from existing traffic-control-center computers. The Pathfinder’s green, glowing video-screen map displays the car’s location and highlights congestion and traffic problems as they occur; a synthesized voice warns of traffic problems ahead. The in-car computer, made by ETAK Inc. of Menlo Park, is compact enough to fit in the trunk.

When the whole system is in place, a full-scale yearlong demonstration will begin. The experts’ hopes are high that the experiment will make a dent in traffic on the Santa Monica freeway. But S. Edward Rowe, head of L.A.’s transportation department, cautions: “Remember, we still are just in the learning stages of smart-corridor technology.”