We get all wrapped up in our little locatable phones and the things we can do with them, such as find our buddies and coffees and the many other self-centric pastimes of today. Occasionally, we get tangled up in determining who holds down number one and two in the marketplace — still just considering, mind you, handsets and handhelds.
In our preoccupation, we may have neglected those other great mechanical metaphors of our times, the automobile and the delivery truck. We may hardly ever think about the defining institution of our age, the highway — and just how GPS-enabled all those rolling boxes and sprawling concrete ribbons could be.
My fact-checker has just confirmed that there are more motor vehicles than cell phones in the United States. It may be a near thing, and subject to change soon, but wheels still rule. And when you consider the miles of pavement across the nation . . .
While everyone has focused on the consumer market for little appliances, have a handful of GPS companies quietly cornered another huge market, and integrated themselves invisibly into a pervasive national infrastructure?
In a run-up to the 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), to convene in November in New York City, such companies have demonstrated advanced vehicle communications along a 22-mile stretch of the Long Island Expressway. GPS and wireless dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) play key roles in new traffic safety and mobility efforts of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Vehicle Infrastructure Initiative (VII).
ITS organizers and companies are now building a second test bed in downtown Manhattan, near the Javits Convention Center. Attendees will experience beta projects that demo several technologies to enhance the safety, performance, and efficiency of transport, including fuel savings.
I’ll be there, as at past ITS Congresses, and I’m already excited. Many of the things I’ve seen in earlier years were then at the awkward stage, but I feel the wave starting to crest. Some of these systems are practically mindblowing: cars “talking” to each other along the highway, passing information about upcoming road, traffic, or weather conditions; stoplights responding to vehicles and vice versa.
Here’s just one example.
Positioned at the beginning and end of a job site or traffic accident, Calmar Telematics’ iCone determines its location via onboard GPS and then monitors and reports traffic speed to a central server that posts to a website. The data can then be downloaded wirelessly by vehicles’ nav systems, giving drivers exact, near-real-time information on the stream they’re in.
Even for someone who’d rather cycle than drive, it’s a brave new world. Say, I hadn’t even thought about tricking out my bike yet.
