Tracking cell phones for real-time traffic data

updated 3:09 p.m. ET Oct. 15, 2005

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Driving to work, you notice the traffic beginning to slow. And because you have your cell phone on, the government senses the delay, too.

A congestion alert is issued, automatically updating electronic road signs and Web sites and dispatching text messages to mobile phones and auto dashboards.

In what would be the largest project of its kind, the Missouri Department of Transportation is finalizing a contract to monitor thousands of cell phones, using their movements to map real-time traffic conditions statewide on all 5,500 miles of major roads.

It's just one of a number of initiatives to more intelligently manage traffic flow through wireless data collection.

Officials say there's no Big Brother agenda in the Missouri project — the data will remain anonymous, leaving no possibility to track specific people from their driveway to their destination.

But privacy advocates are uneasy nonetheless.

"Even though its anonymous, it's still ominous," said Daniel Solove, a privacy law professor at George Washington University and author of "The Digital Person." "It troubles me, because it does show this movement toward using a technology to track people."

Cell phone monitoring already is being used by transportation officials in Baltimore, though not yet to relay traffic conditions to the public. Similar projects are getting underway in Norfolk, Va., and a stretch of Interstate 75 between Atlanta and Macon, Ga.

But the Missouri project is by far the most aggressive — tracking wireless phones across the whole state, including in rural areas with lower traffic counts, and for the explicit purpose of relaying the information to other travelers.

In fact, it would be the biggest system of its kind in the world, said Richard Mudge, a vice president at Delcan Corp., the Canadian company that won the Missouri bid.

The contract is expected to be completed within several weeks, and a cell phone monitoring system tested and implemented within six months after that. The cell phone provider for Missouri hasn't been disclosed, but Delcan uses data from Cingular Wireless LLC phones in the Baltimore project.

Governments have had the ability to measure traffic volumes and speeds for years. They can embed sensors in pavement, or mount scanners and cameras along the road. But those monitoring methods require the installation of equipment, which must be maintained, and can take only a snapshot of traffic at a particular spot.

In contrast, "almost everyone has a cell phone, so you have a lot of potential data points, and you can track data almost anywhere on the whole (road) system," said Valerie Briggs, program manager for transportation operations at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

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