How Houston uses your Bluetooth phone to fight traffic

A massive wall of video screens displays real-time images from a network of cameras, while employees look at a million points of data on their own computers. It's Houston's other mission control, and they've now got a new tool to combat congestion: your Bluetooth device.

Companies such as Trapster and Google use cell phone GPS information to monitor traffic conditions, with varying results, but no one has tried snatching real-time data directly from Bluetooth devices along a network of sensors the way Houston's cutting edge TranStar traffic monitoring center is currently doing it.



How Houston uses your Bluetooth phone to fight traffic



"[AWAM is] dirt cheap!" said David Fink, with the Texas Department of Transportation Houston District. "If our current multi-lane AVI sensors cost $75,000 on the cheap end to install, the most expensive version of the AWAM with solar power and Wi-Fi costs $8,000."

How Houston uses your Bluetooth phone to fight traffic

The costs get even cheaper when the sensor can be added to a normal traffic box, averaging around $1,000 a piece, or 75 times less than a cheap AVI sensor. This poteintial savings was the main impetus for creating a new system, although it provides other advantages as well.

How Houston uses your Bluetooth phone to fight traffic

"Unlike other sensor methods, this system is asynchronous (continually asking and receiving information," said Texas Transportation Institute Research Scientist Darryl Puckett. "Every (MAC) address detected is processed instantaneously."


"The accuracy, once we developed an algorithm that eliminated the outliers, has been consistent because the accuracy of the data is absolute," said Puckett, who says the system learns when a Starbucks or Verizon store is nearby skewing the data.

Houston TranStar says the data is also doubly secure from privacy invasion because the MAC addresses are given anonymous numbers in the system despite the fact that a MAC address on a bluetooth headset, for instance, isn't something as simple to track like an IP address.

How Houston uses your Bluetooth phone to fight traffic

For individuals driving through the Houston area this means they can get up-to-the-second information on travel times between two points, either via the the TranStar website on the device that, itself, is giving information to TranStar, or on transportation information signs located along major interstates that spit out detailed information like "Travel time to 1960 from Betlway 8 is 13 minutes at 4:46 pm."

While AWAM makes Houston a leader in traffic technology, the area's strong economy, sprawling layout, and crazy accidents still makes Houston a leader in needing it.

Necessity is the mother of invention and Houston's traffic is one big mother...

Photo Credit: Eschipul, Houston Transtar