California Traffic Management System Prompts Privacy Concerns

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the California Highway Patrol and the state's transportation department are partnering on the introduction in the San Francisco Bay area of TravInfo, a service that uses wireless technology to collect and deliver real-time traffic information. TravInfo gathers the data by sending signals from transponders attached to commuters' cars to sensors along the road. The sensors send back encrypted information to the TravInfo system yielding a report on how traffic is flowing. When there is congestion, reports can be sent to drivers via cell phone, radio or the Internet. Privacy advocates and some commuters are concerned that the system can be used to track people's movements. The transponders on commuters' cars are used to pay tolls so they are connected to databases that have identifying information. The MTC says TravInfo will generate separate coded information that is destroyed daily. The only way for commuters to stop the transponders from communicating with the sensors is by putting them in their Mylar carrying cases. Similar traffic management systems are being used in Houston and in the New York region. (Source: AP) 

Source - Associated Press

MobileInfo Comments and Advisory: California MTC is trying to solve one of the most important problems that has the potential of reducing passenger frustration, easing traffic and improving productivity of nation's workforce. We believe the traffic congestion information is all there but it is the way that information can be personalized by individual driver for his/her own route in real-time mode that is important. It is too early to tell whether information will be delivered on demand in a personalized fashion. General-purpose traffic information broadcast over a wide area is of less use. Let us deliver route-specific content on demand and in real-time. Only users know their origin and destination. Only they can pull information on their route. That mode of traffic information delivery will be progress.