Trim the time lost in traffic tie-ups

The one thing you can’t cheat in life is time, and one of the biggest thieves of our time in Southern California is the freeway system.

The average commuter here loses 93 hours in traffic delays each year -- the worst in the nation by a huge margin -- and estimated average speeds on freeways have dropped to about 35 miles per hour, according to a recent report by the Texas Transportation Institute.

“It is a big challenge out there,” said Frank Quon, Caltrans deputy director for operations in the region. “We are trying to improve mobility.”

It’s not a hopeless problem, however, and new technology offers to increase the efficiency of freeways without building new ones.

The latest product on the market is TrafficGauge, a nifty PDA-sized device that displays freeway volume information on a 3-by-5-inch LCD screen. The information comes directly from the California Department of Transportation’s network of 13,000 sensors buried in roadbeds across the region.

I tested the device for two weeks and ended up loving it until it was stolen out of my car. But that’s another sorry story about modern life here.

The device sells for $80 and comes with one month of free service. Each additional month costs $7.

The beauty of TrafficGauge and other services that provide information to motorists is that if enough people are paying attention to freeway volume conditions it not only helps each individual but the overall system as well.

“We have to take what we have and use it more efficiently,” said Eric Meyer, chief executive of the Seattle-based company that produces the devices and sells the service.

More efficient use of the freeway system means that motorists might delay trips if they know they are going into a traffic nightmare or look for alternate freeway or surface street routes that will lighten the burden on the jammed routes.

In my case, I have more than half a dozen ways to get to work. I just need accurate information to pick the right one. Like most people, I listen to traffic news on the radio, but I really don’t like it. The L.A. freeway system is too large for traffic radio to mention much more than the big tie-ups. And I’d rather be listening to music anyway.

I tried turning off the radio traffic reports during my test of TrafficGauge and found that the device kept me out of trouble almost all the time. It displays the freeway grid in Los Angeles and Orange counties, but not Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

When traffic is light, the grid shows no marks. Very heavy stop-and-go traffic is represented by flashing dashes. Intermediate traffic is shown with solid dashes.

The device has to compress a lot of data to show the conditions on the 850 miles of freeways it covers. Each dash represents the average speeds over about three to four miles of roadway and averaged again over all the lanes in each direction. The traffic congestion data is updated every four minutes.

In practical use, that means that when TrafficGauge shows a solid dash, cars can be moving at 50 miles per hour or at 20 miles per hour. But I encountered no heavy traffic where the device indicated open lanes. And flashing dashes always truly represented a traffic nightmare.

Some of the technology geeks at The Times took exception to the quality of the TrafficGauge display. The representation of the freeway grid also is cramped, particularly in the big interchanges such as the East L.A. interchange and the Four Level. Anybody over 40 years old will probably need reading glasses to see the display.

Still, I like the simplicity of TrafficGauge. It is always on. There are no buttons to push. And the LCD screen has good contrast. (For more information, go to www.trafficgauge.com.)

I could find no direct competitors to TrafficGauge, but other services provide similar information. The Sigalert.com website and service also distributes Caltrans data. The website provides a free L.A. traffic condition map, showing much more data than TrafficGauge’s. You can’t take it with you in your car because it cannot be displayed on a cellphone or PDA -- but it’s helpful to check before you head out the door, if you remember.

Jonathan Berke, president of Sigalert.com, says the company also sells a service called My Sigalert for $2.95 a month that will send traffic conditions in text messages to a PDA or cellphone.

Because outfits such as TrafficGauge and SigAlert.com can help improve traffic flow, Caltrans provides its data to them free, Quon said.

It’s important to realize that only half the congestion on freeways is the result of too many cars. The other half is the result of accidents and other incidents that can be avoided if you are well informed.

Although Southern California has the most jammed freeways in the nation, it also has among the most advanced management systems. About every quarter-mile of freeway is equipped to measure volume, and Caltrans also monitors conditions with 400 cameras.

All the data is fed to Caltrans’ operations center in downtown L.A. It looks something like a NASA mission control center and is staffed 24 hours a day. As you sit there looking at the big display of freeway conditions and watching videos of traffic jams all over the area, you wonder if you ever want to get into a car again.

But technology is providing some hope that we might raise ourselves above the level of ants marching along in columns.

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Ralph Vartabedian can be reached at ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com.