Subject: [NEXTEL-1] "Smart" traffic alert system folds

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 17:09:46 -0500

'Smart' Traffic
 System a Failure 

Personal Notification Service 
Lacked Data, Customers and Profits 

By Katherine Shaver
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 17, 2002
Page B01 

A high-tech phone service launched six years ago to give Washington area motorists
personally tailored traffic reports will fold today -- before most people knew it existed.

Local governments spent $8 million on SmarTraveler, calling it an essential public service
in a region plagued by traffic jams. The money was supposed to cover start-up costs until
the private operator could turn a profit. Five other areas also invested millions in
SmarTraveler, but all have abandoned it as a profit-making venture. Those that still use
it, including Boston and Florida, pay for it.

The financial collapse of SmarTraveler here represents yet another failure of the
once-booming high-tech sector, which was sold on promises of revolutionizing people's
daily lives. It also highlights the data gap that has made delivering complete real-time
traffic information more difficult than anticipated 10 years ago, experts say.

In a downward economy, advertising did not materialize. Most of the system's relatively
few users were unwilling to pay extra for personalized traffic e-mail or pager alerts --
another key source of revenue. Because the system had a small marketing budget, few
motorists were aware of how it differed from free traffic reports on television and radio.

In a region of 5.4 million people, SmarTraveler averaged just 12,000 phone calls and 1
million Web site hits per month as of 2000, Virginia officials said. By this summer, it
had fallen to an average of 5,000 monthly phone calls and 264,000 Web hits.

The information provided often did not keep pace with motorists' demand for detailed,
up-to-the-minute traffic reports, experts said. Local and state governments, they say,
have not installed enough roadside cameras, in-road vehicle speed sensors, coordinated
computer databases and other high-tech tools needed to make real-time traffic reports
widespread and reliable.

That is a national concern, because states and cities are working on implementing 511, a
phone service akin to 911 that would give up-to-the-minute local traffic information when
dialed anywhere in the country. Some of the problems SmarTraveler encountered must be
solved before 511 will work, transportation experts say.

"We just have not had the data there to support all of the things that the public wants,"
said Todd Kell, a senior policy analyst for the Virginia Department of Transportation,
which oversaw the region's contract with SmartRoute Systems, a subsidiary of Westwood One
Inc. "I can't put a phone number in place that doesn't have information to give to
people."

Ginny Crowson of the Minnesota Department of Transportation said the public wants more
traffic information than ever. Minnesota, which recently launched a 511 system, invested
$2.6 million in SmarTraveler from 1998 until the contract expired in May.

"People used to be happy with you saying, 'There's an accident on I-94 between Minneapolis
and St. Paul,' " Crowson said. "Now they want to know: 'Is that eastbound or westbound? Is
there a detour? How long is the backup?' "

Just four years ago, at the height of the tech boom, the possibilities of such intelligent
transportation systems seemed so promising that a dozen companies lined up to provide
"real-time" traffic information in major urban areas.

The personally tailored services were supposed to give people traffic information when and
where they wanted it. Rather than waiting for a radio or television broadcast that might
not mention the roads they needed, they could call or log on before heading out or call
from the road.

Motorists could punch in "3-9-5-*," for example, and the SmarTraveler computer would tell
them whether an overturned tractor-trailer at the Mixing Bowl had made a mess of Shirley
Highway. It also could identify delays on Metro, MARC, Virginia Railway Express and other
public transit services.

Local transportation officials hoped that steering people around traffic jams would
increase the efficiency of the entire road network, in addition to soothing nerves. They
said the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which snarled traffic as the District was evacuated,
only underscored the system's importance.

In the past 15 years, intelligent transportation systems have become a fundamental part of
getting around. Computers synchronize traffic signals and change overhead message signs
that alert motorists to conditions on major highways. Transponders in cars allow drivers
to breeze through tollbooths while tolls are automatically deducted from accounts.

In addition, traffic centers with walls of television screens -- such as the Maryland
State Highway Administration's Coordinated Highways Action Response Team (CHART) center --
enable highway officials to locate trouble spots with cameras and send help more quickly.

This fall, Metro launched a computerized phone system that gives callers the cheapest,
fastest or most direct bus or train route. Arlington County is testing satellite
technology to give riders real-time Metro bus arrival times.

But alerting people to constantly changing traffic conditions on thousands of miles of
roads has proved more difficult. Today, most of the high-tech companies that tried it are
out of business.

David Fierro, a SmartRoute Systems vice president, blamed a poor business model for
SmarTraveler's downfall here. In a chicken-and-egg cycle, Fierro said, less advertising
revenue and lack of demand for pager and e-mail alerts meant less money for marketing.
Less marketing meant fewer users, and fewer interested advertisers.

Fierro said he, like many others, has concluded that governments will have to pay for such
services -- about $1 million a year in a major metropolitan area. Cameras, sensors and
message signs are "extremely expensive," he said.

Washington area governments are working to install the 511 system, now being tested on
Virginia's Interstate 81 corridor, in the next few years. SmarTraveler will still provide
Washington area traffic information to private clients, including washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64166-2002Dec16.html

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