Traffic Advice Via the Hard Drive : Computers: OCTA plan would allow access to freeway information through kiosks, computers, cable TV and by phone. Anaheim has plans for its own system.

Cyberspace is about to meet the Orange County road.

Until now, up-to-the-minute traffic reports have been the domain mostly of aircraft pilots or cellular phone tipsters crawling in freeway congestion.

But sometime next year, the city of Anaheim expects to launch its own computerized traffic information service, which anxious motorists can dial up from their PCs or Macs before they hit the road.

The Orange County Transit Authority, meanwhile, is designing a computerized travel information system that will include electronic, touch-screen kiosks at bus and train stations, as well as John Wayne Airport. About 15 kiosks spread around the county are projected initially.

Punch in your destination, and the system will tell you the best way to get there at that particular moment, showing you traffic conditions and estimated trip times by car, bus and train. A contract to build the initial kiosks will be awarded in early 1995, said Dean Delgado, who oversees such plans for the OCTA.

“Eventually, this would spread if the private sector gets involved and helps pay for these things,” Delgado said. “We would expand the system to major employment centers.”

It’s all part of national efforts to develop so-called intelligent highways, the hot concept among today’s traffic planners.

Eventually, such systems would send information directly to a dash-mounted navigation computer in your vehicle, where it would be displayed on maps. Some engineers predict that vehicles will be guided and controlled along specific paths by computers, all in a bid to squeeze maximum efficiencies out of existing pavement.

But that merger, where the information highway meets the asphalt highway, is still years away. For the immediate future it will be these local computer bulletin board and kiosk projects that will be arriving in Orange County. They will team up with today’s mainstays--changeable electronic message displays and traditional highway signs along freeways that advise motorists to tune to a special Caltrans radio station for traffic updates.

The kiosk project has already had a limited test. Little more than a year ago, two experimental kiosks were set up by Anaheim; one in the lobby of the Anaheim Hilton, across the street from the Anaheim Convention Center, and another at Stadium Plaza Towers West, a private office complex near Anaheim Stadium.

The concepts behind these future traffic aids aren’t new.

Less high-tech versions have been tried around Seattle and on the East Coast. A consortium of Eastern corridor states from Maine to Virginia has been developing systems to provide traveler information for Interstate 95.

Many European rail stations and airports have had electronic kiosks for several years, but they’re largely restricted to transit schedules and ticketing of passengers, not up-to-the-minute highway information.

In Los Angeles, Caltrans has experimented with TV monitors placed in key locations, including downtown building lobbies. They provide departing workers with current freeway data via closed-circuit cable.

Similarly, the kiosks in Anaheim are first-generation devices that provide color-coded information about traffic conditions, without the users being able to query the system about specific destinations. Red means heavy congestion, and green means traffic is free-flowing.

So far, Anaheim traffic engineer Jim Paral said, the kiosks aren’t used much--about once an hour, with heaviest usage in the late afternoon. Paral said it will take time to educate the public about using such devices.

Anaheim’s plans to provide traffic data that can be accessed by home or office computers aren’t yet complete. Paral said the city may offer similar color-coded maps and travel information through an existing computer bulletin board, such as LA Online. It is a regional, private dial-up service with free access that offers advertising as well as news, shopping and entertainment. One problem, Paral said, is that he hasn’t been able to display color maps on LA Online.

The service would report on freeways and local streets.

Anaheim gets its street information from a high-tech traffic control center built across the street from City Hall. Freeway information is supplied to the center by Caltrans.

Until computer-controlled vehicles make the scene, the goal is to make a “more intelligent driver,” Paral said. “We’re driven by our traffic needs. We have major event centers--Disneyland, the Convention Center, Anaheim Stadium and now our new arena--and in order to have real-time traffic management, we needed a more advanced system.”

OCTA’s more ambitious plans, meanwhile, have received a $450,000 federal grant for the design and engineering of a traveler information system that would be similar to Anaheim’s but countywide.

Information on OCTA’s system, which is being designed by JHK Associates, as is Anaheim’s, will be available from kiosks, computer bulletin boards, cable TV and by phone.

“Right now our initial concept is to put kiosks at some of the major transportation and transit centers,” OCTA’s Delgado said. “You pick point A, where you’re starting from, and point B, where you want to go, and the system says, ‘Here are your options about how to get there.’ . . . You’ll see not only what freeway you wouldn’t want to take, but how long your trip will take by rail or bus and surface streets.”

Initially, according to OCTA’s 20-year master plan for intelligent vehicle highway systems, there would be about 15 kiosks countywide: at the train stations in Anaheim, Fullerton, Irvine, Orange, San Juan Capistrano and Santa Ana; OCTA bus depots in Huntington Beach, Laguna Hills, Newport Beach and Santa Ana, and two at John Wayne Airport, plus the two sites in Anaheim.

Bus riders will benefit, too.

OCTA is planning to install tracking devices on buses so officials--and eventually commuters--will know when a bus will arrive at a certain stop.

“Eventually,” Delgado said, “computers will monitor road conditions and recommend solutions to problems before they get out of hand, and then carry them out.”

OCTA has preliminary plans for a traffic-operations center that would do just that. Research is underway at UC Irvine and elsewhere.

Some experts warn that kiosks and bulletin boards are one thing; willingness to hand control of a car over to a computer is something else. There are plenty of unresolved issues dear to any veteran Southern California driver. For example: Who pays if your computer-guided vehicle is guided into an accident?

Smart Freeways

The Orange County Transportation Authority has developed a 20-year plan for implementing a system that would monitor conditions on the county’s freeways and major thoroughfares, then feed that information via computer to motorists at the first freeways targeted for electronic monitoring.

Source: Orange County Transportation Authority