![]() ![]() If anyone can make gasoline environmentally conscionable, Bill Kinney can. You become another data point in the great traffic calculus. The catch: Whenever you use Inrix Traffic!, it tracks your location and speed. Inrix recently launched a free iPhone app. Washington’s DOT isn’t among them: “We continue to have discussions,” says Mistele. So far Inrix has sold its tracking and forecasting services to businesses and agencies ranging from automakers (Ford and BMW) to state transportation departments-22 so far. This, boasts CEO Bryan Mistele, lets Inrix monitor “not just the major freeways but arterials, side streets, and I-90 all the way across Snoqualmie Pass.” Its Smart Driver Network crunches this data with weather reports, school schedules, sports events, and even protest marches to delineate not only current but upcoming traffic conditions-a MapQuest that scopes out traffic as well as routes, and sees into the future. Inrix augments official sensor data with real-time GPS data from over a million mobile points: taxis, trucks, and delivery vans in 1,000 commercial fleets that contract with Inrix (and in return receive its information on traffic conditions). And they only tell you how traffic is flowing now, not how it will in 15 minutes or an hour. In the 1990s Washington and other states graduated to monitoring flow continuously with buried sensors. Tracking traffic used to depend on anecdotal nuggets such as accident and chopper reports. But it planted a seed that sprouted five years ago, when Microsoft spun off its traffic technologies as an independent company, Inrix. Traf-o-Data lapsed when its founders couldn’t find a buyer for it. Detroit and San Jose: 2:1īill Gates was still in high school when he and Paul Allen started their first company, Traf-o-Data, based on the then-vanguard notion of using computers to collect and analyze traffic data. National rank of Seattle’s worst choke point, westbound SR 520 and Bellevue Way: 112ĭecline in Seattle congestion, 2007 to 2008, due to falling economy and rising gas prices: 28 percentĭecline in average Seattle travel time, 2007 to 2008: 7 percent Seattle-Tacoma’s rank among congested metropolitan areas, 2008: 9 “Ten cars later, you have a traffic jam.” “The coyote looks down and he’s screwed,” says Hallenbeck. The faith that kept them going at untenably close distance is broken. The next driver must brake harder to avoid colliding, the next one harder still. Then something happens: an accident, a traffic stop or breakdown, a catchy billboard. ![]() But morning rush-hour volumes reach 2,400 vehicles. In theory, maximum traffic flow is about 2,000 vehicles per lane per hour, which allows two seconds’ stopping distance between each. Likewise, says Hallenbeck, freeway drivers routinely perform the impossible, as long as they don’t notice they’re doing it. Number of King Country Workers Commuting By…Ĭoyote chases Road Runner off a cliff-and keeps running, untroubled, until he stops, glances down sheepishly, and plummets to earth. ![]()
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