What: “IBM, along with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and California Center for Innovative Transportation at the University of California, Berkeley, announced a new effort to develop an intelligent transportation solution in managing traffic flow.”
How: “The application works by first learning your travel hours and patterns over a duration of time. Once adapted to your usual routine, the application sends you notifications before you leave for your daily commute. The application also sends recommended travel routes and alternative modes of transit, which, in addition to easing congestion, can also encourage the use of public transit and reduce greenhouse emissions.”
Why: “John Day, an IBM Researcher working on the project, emphasizes the predictive aspect of the technology as its main advantage in comparison to other traffic information in the industry. “GPS-equipped mobile devices can give us up-to-minute traffic information, which is great sometimes, but what we really care about, what we really focused on in the Smarter Traveler project was getting that information 30 or 40 minutes in advance rather than waiting until you’re already stuck in traffic,” Day says in a video interview.”
IBM: Who Knew? 