The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : Drivers Stuck in Traffic Can Call in for Quickest Routes Around Town : Multimedia: Services can be accessed by cellular paging, radio reports or the Internet.

Engineer Tom Peterson had one of his best ideas while stuck in traffic.

“I was staring at my cellular phone, and I remember thinking, ‘Who can I call who’d know the fastest way home?’ ” said Peterson, then the manager of a shipping terminal. “The only place I could think of was Caltrans.”

Six years later, Peterson and his firm, Traffic Assist, are test-marketing a service that enables subscribers to punch in a code and hear a computerized voice describe the quickest way to get across town. He is one of a dozen or so Southern California entrepreneurs repackaging and selling Caltrans traffic information by way of cellular paging services, regionalized radio reports, telephone dispatch services and the Internet computer network.

These services are in many respects the precursors to the “intelligent transportation systems” of the future, in which a variety of computer technologies would vastly increase the efficiency of the highway system by enabling cars to travel closer together and easily find alternate routes.

While the high-tech highways of the future will have all manner of computerized sensors to monitor traffic flow and give instructions accordingly, today’s traffic entrepreneurs have to settle for a more limited--though still very valuable--information source: a network of electronic sensors that Caltrans has in place along 480 miles of Southern California freeways in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties.

The sensors--wire loops buried in the pavement--generate electromagnetic fields that can judge the speed of vehicles traveling through them. They were first installed in 1971 to help engineers determine how frequently traffic meters should allow vehicles to enter the freeways from on-ramps.

About three years ago, Caltrans began making the data gathered by the sensors available to radio stations to supplement their traffic helicopter reports. That decision set off an unexpected scramble for access to the information: 19 businesses have paid from $2,500 to $10,000 apiece for feeds from Caltrans computers in Downtown Los Angeles, and the last available connection was taken earlier this year.

Gregory Damico, a senior transportation engineer in the agency’s Los Angeles district office, said that, if the agency could meet all requests for access, “we’d have 300 new users overnight.”

That great demand has planners pondering just how readily available the agency’s information should be: Knowledge of an undertraveled alternate route, after all, is only valuable if not too many people know about it.

Given current freeway designs, only about 30% of motorists would ideally be allowed to see the overall traffic picture, according to Hani Mahmassani, a University of Texas professor who has designed model traffic systems by computer. Above that level, he said, the cumulative effect of thousands of motorists detouring at once to avoid freeway jams could result in everybody being worse off.

“Information is a double-edged sword,” Mahmassani said. “Past a certain point, the individual decisions of each driver become counterproductive” to the smooth flow of traffic.

The view of Caltrans planners is that traffic data should eventually be coordinated with other systems, including rail networks, computerized signal lights and other high-tech methods to smooth congestion.

“If you have all the infrastructure, then the feeling is that everybody benefits” from more information, said Patrick Conroy, a supervisory research engineer. “That’s the working assumption.”

But those seeking to capitalize on Southern Californians’ traffic frustrations aren’t waiting for more infrastructure.

Cue Network Corp. in Irvine, for instance, uses Caltrans data in conjunction with a system developed with map maker Thomas Bros., also in Irvine, to display real-time traffic conditions on computer networks in offices. Cue Network said it plans to market the service to large corporations, who in turn could make it available to employees as a way to check on traffic conditions before they leave work.

Auto Talk, a Los Angeles company, offers subscribers radio traffic reports for specific geographic areas. The company’s device, which sells for $100, attaches to car radios and allows drivers to hear road condition reports from seven different regions of the metropolitan area.

Another Los Angeles company, Qumpo Inc., uses its feed to generate updated road reports every four minutes over pagers. It charges $25 a month for the service, which it calls Roadirector.

And since June, a Southland freeway map has been available to Internet users with the Mosaic program, which simplifies access to photos, maps and other files that are difficult to download. A driver with a cellular modem and a powerful PC could display the map on the dashboard.

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The map is maintained by S-Cubed, a research division of electronic components manufacturer Maxwell Labs Inc. in San Diego.

“I’d always been frustrated with the inability to get the data to use, since I knew it was out there,” said William Proffer, a senior research scientist at the company.

When the company learned that Caltrans had no plans to make its map available on the Internet, Proffer said, employees decided to offer the map themselves as an advertising vehicle. Users who call up the map can also view S-Cubed’s catalogue of software, capacitors and other products.

Proffer and other company executives maintain that their services will help to reduce freeway congestion until a more comprehensive traffic system can be built.

“I tend to think that the more information you have, the better,” said Tom Luczak, owner and president of Paging Plus in Glendale, which is working on software that would beam Caltrans information to motorists using digitized radio signals.

Reports on commercial radio stations, Luczak said, will continue to benefit those who cannot afford or choose not to buy more advanced services.

“It’s going to come down to what the consumer is willing to spend,” he said. “The vast majority are probably going to be happy enough with traffic radio. I think it will be those heavy travelers who will go with the extra $10 or $15 a month to learn more.”