If you stepped inside this building with your eyes closed and then opened them wide, you could swear you were at NASA–or on the movie set for “Apollo 13.”
But no, the space shuttle is not preparing to launch and Tom Hanks is not stopping by to give cheery farewell comments.
Here at TransGuide, a new $32 million traffic-control center, the mission is monitoring highway travel in real time. To do so, the facility, the first of its kind in the U.S., has rows of super computers and video walls.
If there’s an accident or traffic slows down, it gets an immediate alarm from sensors in the highway. Within two minutes, it uses remote cameras to identify the site and dispatch help. Seconds later, it changes the road’s message signs to advise motorists of delays or alternate routes.
Here, in this wow-room designed by the people who built mission control for NASA, is launched an era that marries high-tech with low-tech asphalt.
The match will revolutionize how you travel by using the best of today, the information superhighway, to improve the pride of yesterday, the physical highway.
It’s a hot item–for good reason. In the past, when travel boomed, officials responded by building new roads. But now, with budgets tight and the 45,530-mile Interstate Highway System nearly complete, they say they can’t afford to keep pouring more asphalt.
Besides, they’ve learned that just building more miles only fuels more travel.
“The interstate program was good in its day. But we’ve got to move on,” says Tim Lomax, research engineer at the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University.
In the next two decades, you won’t see many new interstate miles. Only about 73 miles of small segments are planned for construction.
Another 21 routes nationwide could receive the interstate badge if states pay for the needed upgrades.
What you will likely see are roads with smoother traffic flows, some of which may charge tolls and others may lead to light rail systems for commuting.
Still other highways–especially the interstates–may be automated. You sit back while they do the driving.
– What a drive. By 1997, federal officials plan to have a test track for a road that uses electronic sensors to guide cars. By 2002, law requires them to have a fully automated prototype that steers cars bumper-to-bumper.
Some electronic wizardry is available.
General Motors is selling, as a roughly $2,000 option on its Oldsmobile 88, an in-car navigation system developed by Rockwell International Corp. The driver punches in an address and gets turn-by-turn directions.
Within a few years, aerospace giant TRW Inc. will begin installing radar-activated cruise control in luxury cars. The device sets your speed based on the car ahead. Ford is using radar to develop a system that detects objects in fog or rain.
“None of what we’re talking about is Buck Rogers,” says Thomas Urbanick, head of transportation systems at the Texas Transportation Institute.
“The question is whether the public is ready to accept these things.” But, he adds: “They’re inevitable.”
Some of the information has been available for decades. Roads have long had sensors to monitor traffic, which was reported to a central location by phone.
But now, fiber optic cabling enables the data to arrive instantly.
– The smart couple. Known as ITS, for Intelligent Transportation Systems, it brings the aerospace and highway industries together.
The winning bidders to build TransGuide represent that new union. The prime contractor was AlliedSignal, of NASA renown, and the two main subcontractors were AT&T and H.B. Zachry, a highway builder that installed the electronic sensors in the roads to be monitored.
“It’s a new way of doing business in surface transportation,” says Jerry Bastarache, spokesman for ITS America, a group begun by Congress in 1991 that works with private companies to promote “smart” transportation.
Houston is a good example. Transit authorities there are monitoring traffic by placing electronic tags in at least 30,000 cars and buses. They plan to build a TransGuide-type control center.
So, too, does Atlanta, host of the 1996 Summer Olympics. TRW, which is handling transportation for the event, hopes to have a state-of-the-art traffic management center in operation by then.
In Maryland, a wide-area surveillance system is up and running. It monitors traffic from Frederick to the Eastern Shore, posting messages on overhead highway signs about problems ahead.
You can access some of these travel advisories from home on your computer and the World Wide Web.
The Texas Transportation Institute has started a user-friendly home page that provides real-time traffic reports for Seattle, Los Angeles, Houston and San Diego. (The address: http://herman.tamu.edu.)
Some wonder, though, whether ITS is smart enough.
“It’s a pipe dream. It’s a scam,” says David Hartgen, a professor at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte. He expects it will increase overall travel and pollution by diverting drivers onto other roads that will become congested.
“A lot of people looked at this as `Star Wars.’ A lot of people just didn’t understand it,” says Patrick Irwin, director of transportation operations for TransGuide.
Yet experts agree that reducing urban road congestion without another major highway-building frenzy will require several solutions–some low-tech, some high-tech. They include special high-occupancy vehicle lanes, light rail and electronically metered traffic lights.
– For whom the toll rings. Another possibility is “congestion pricing,” in which drivers are charged a fee to drive on a highway in peak travel time. Telephone companies have long charged higher rates for peak-hour usage.
The Federal Highway Administration is encouraging communities to experiment with the idea, but they’ve been leery because many see the fee as a tax.
Yet Orange County, Calif., is taking the plunge. A private company has built express lanes onto California Highway 91 and is charging drivers a toll based on the time of use. If it’s rush hour, they pay up to $2.50 one-way for the 10-mile trip. If it’s 9 p.m., they pay a quarter.
Drivers get a transponder for their car that acts as an electronic debit card whenever it passes an overhead toll device. If they don’t buy a box, they get a hefty fine.
Federal officials are allowing states, for the first time, to use federal money to build toll roads.
Houston, for example, is using federal aid to build the southern part of Beltway Eight tollway.
– The rail way. In Portland, Ore., jobs are growing but traffic is not, partly because the city built a light-rail system.
It’s not alone. In the last decade, Sacramento, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego, Calif., and Denver and other cities also have done so. And each has seen ridership meet or exceed projections.
About 40 light-rail projects nationwide are under way. Many are designed to ease congestion.
“There’s definitely a niche for this,” says Bill Barnes, spokesman for the Utah Transit Authority, which plans to break ground on a 15-mile light-rail system for Salt Lake City at the end of this year.
The authority’s plans are meant to complement the area’s longer-range project to rebuild a parallel stretch of the interstate. Drivers will be able to rely on the rail during construction, expected to take about a decade.
The integrated approach was the goal of a bill, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act, that Congress passed in 1991. It’s starting to happen, says Chip Bishop, spokesman for the American Public Transit Association.
“But it’s going to take time,” says Bishop. “It’s an evolution, not a revolution.” He notes, for example, that highway programs still dominate funding. And Congress is giving them a boost but is cutting transit.
In yet another sign of integration, some light-rail systems, such as those in traffic management, are using fiber-optic cabling and other high-technology.
In Los Angeles County, the door that leads to the control center has the entrance sign: “Starship Enterprise.” It was the set for a few scenes in the movie “Speed.”
