No one likes wasting time and money sitting in traffic. Did you know that due to traffic congestion in the US, most people waste an average of a week’s worth of time, 28 gallons of gas and $808 over the course of a year? With IBM’s new Smarter Traveler Research Initiative, wasting time and gas sitting in traffic may become a thing of the past.
Yesterday IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced a joint initiative with the California Department of Transportation and the California Center for Innovative Transportation, to develop an intelligent transportation solution that will help commuters avoid congestion and enable transportation agencies to better understand, predict and manage traffic flow.
Even with advances in GPS system navigation, real-time traffic alerts and mapping, daily commute times are often unreliable, and relevant updates on how to avoid congestion often reach drivers when they are already stuck in traffic and it is too late to change course. This problem is what led IBM researchers to develop their new project, called Smarter Traveler. The Smarter Traveler system is going to collect and analyze traffic data from over 1,000 sensors already embedded in the cement at toll booths, bridges, roads and intersections in the San Francisco Bay area.