ne fine sunny morning in August of 1997, the 21st century arrived in San Diego County. On an empty eight-mile stretch of Interstate 15, eight

Developments in automotive technology could help relieve Southern California's traffic tie-ups . By John Brant Illustrations by Tim Barker Photographs courtesy of California PATH .

specially equipped Buick LeSabres cruised at the speed limit with about a car-length distance separating them. The people behind the wheels functioned more as passengers than as drivers; computers and radar gear in the vehicles and along the highway controlled the cars.

Such "intelligent" vehicles, engineers claim, minimize the single greatest cause of traffic accidents and related congestion: driver error. Moreover, they say, platooning vehicles closely together in automated highway lanes could double the existing freeway capacity and dramatically reduce congestion-related pollution and fuel consumption.

The 1997 event was a media sensation for the UC Berkeley-based Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH), Caltrans, and a federally funded working group of state transportation agencies, automakers, and researchers commissioned to develop a proto-type automated highway lane. The automated highway movement, part of a discipline generally known as intelligent transportation systems (ITS), is based on the premise that information and technology can be successfully — perhaps revolutionarily — applied to autos, trucks, buses, and highways.

The Car's Changing Role
The importance of and need for ITS is founded on a realistic appraisal of transportation in California and across the nation: Cars will continue to provide mobility for the vast majority of people and the trips they take, but if we are to

Automated highway demonstration (photo at top and one immediately above), San Diego County, 1997.

maintain or increase our mobility, we must find ways to make cars function more effectively.

One of the biggest transportation challenges Californians face, of course, is congestion. According to a recent study by the Texas Transportation Institute, the average driver in Los Angeles spends 56 hours a year stuck in traffic, considerably above the national average. And because our population and the number of miles we drive continue to increase, congestion is only likely to intensify. The Southern California Association of Governments predicts that daily commute times could double by 2025 and that Southern California drivers could spend 32 percent of their driving time in stop-and-go traffic, compared to 17 percent today.

Such pessimism is grounded in the fact that, by themselves, none of the conventional remedies for congestion will completely solve the problem. For instance, in Southern California, only about 4 percent of commuters currently use public transit. But even if that number tripled during the next decade, the modest reduction in highway use would be quickly canceled out by population growth. By the same token, building new urban highways can be tremendously expensive and can often face difficult environmental and political challenges. Substantially raising gas taxes and highway fees — the European style of limiting traffic — remains politically unthinkable in the United States.

High-Tech Solutions
Therefore, runs the subsequent ITS argument, along with trying to build, bus, and bicycle our way out of congestion, we should also be inventing our way out. Steven Shladover, PATH's deputy director and chief engineer, contends that our highway system could be made vastly more efficient. He points out that in nonpeak traffic hours, the typical freeway lane accommodates 2,000 to 2,400 vehicles per hour. An automated freeway lane moving at the speed limit could safely carry more than twice that volume. "That's because on our present freeways, only 5 percent of the road surface is occupied when the freeway is operating at maximum capacity," he says. "The rest is open space that drivers maintain for safety. Using radar-sensor technology and radio communications, an automated highway can close most of that space. One automated lane can provide the equivalent capacity of three regular lanes."

Shladover and others in the field hoped that the 1997 demonstration in San Diego would jump-start the deployment of smart-vehicle technology. But instead, the demo formed the high-water mark for the most ambitious era of the automated-vehicle movement. Even as the eight high-tech LeSabres were platooning down I-15, officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)

OCTA Introduces TravelTIP This past June, the Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) launched TravelTIP, its real-time traffic and commuter information service. Designed as a tool to enable travelers to better manage their commute, TravelTIP provides up-to-the-minute details on Orange County freeway and surface-street traffic flow, road closures, and advisories; bus routes, schedules, and fares; and links to important transportation websites. Ultimately, the goal is for TravelTIP information to be accessible by pagers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and in-vehicle navigation systems. TravelTIP is available free by logging on to www.traveltip.net, by calling (949) 451-1TIP, or by consulting a kiosk at OCTA Transit Centers. — John Lehrer

were pulling funding from the project, deciding to take a more modest, incremental approach by shifting their money and support to a program called the Intelligent Vehicle Initiative (IVI), which employs automated-highway concepts, but with a primary goal of improving safety rather than reducing congestion.

Still, because more than two-thirds of accidents are caused by driver error, and because fewer accidents translate to fewer traffic jams, the IVI will also relieve congestion. The program, supported by the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, an advisory committee to the DOT, is promoting the development of high-tech, in-vehicle remedies for eight problem areas, including ways to avoid rear-end collisions and crashes that occur when a driver is merging or changing lanes. ITS America is also urging local governments to work with telephone service providers to develop a standardized 511 telephone number that would provide a full range of highway and transit information.

Total nationwide funding for intelligent transportation systems will amount to almost $1.6 billion over the next six years. At the ITS America National Summit in April 2001, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta said, "Our vision for ITS's potential led to the Department of Transportation's decision to invest $253 million, a 32 percent increase over 2001, for intelligent transportation systems. During my tenure as Secretary of Transportation, the benchmark of success for ITS will be the deployment of intelligent transportation systems." By 2010, experts project that 10 percent of new light vehicles and 25 percent of new commercial vehicles will be equipped with one or more intelligent vehicle systems.

Building Smart Cars
One intriguing intelligent vehicle device is adaptive cruise control (ACC). Like conventional cruise control, ACC maintains a preset speed. But ACC also employs Doppler radar with a sensor mounted behind the grille and connected to the accelerator and the brakes, automatically adjusting a car's speed to maintain a safe distance from the vehicle directly in front of it.

"Adaptive cruise control is the first system in a network of sensors that will surround your car," sensor-manufacturing executive John Vaughan told reporters in 1998. "It's the beginning of the microwave era in automotive electronics."

Although ACC is currently available only on a few high-end imported vehicles, such as Lexus, Jaguar, and Mercedes-Benz, the auto industry is closely watching

During the next decade, total reactive organic gases (ROG) emitted from automobiles in Southern California will continue to decline, as they have since 1965, even though the number of cars and the total miles traveled per year will increase.

its progress. Acting as a bridge to more sophisticated IVI technology, ACC represents the first significant yielding of basic operations from driver to vehicle — the first step, perhaps, toward truly automated cars.

Intelligent vehicle devices can also complement technologies that have allowed cars to run more cleanly and more efficiently. For example, in the greater Los Angeles area, the number of days above the state standard for ozone concentration have dropped from 192 in 1985 to 107 in 2000, and auto emissions have dropped by 995 tons per day. In the next decade, total emissions will continue to decline, even though the number of autos will likely increase by 1 percent per year and the miles driven by 1.3 percent per year.

Dealing With Continuing Growth
For the average Southern California motorist, ITS and IVI mean evolution instead of revolution: modest, incremental changes in the way we relate to our cars. Looking ahead, however, we may need a more thoroughgoing approach.

The 500-pound gorilla riding the back of every transportation planner in Southern California isn't the absence of automated highways, the scarcity of new ideas, or the possibility of diminished funding. It's the prospect of continuing rapid growth. By 2025, California's population is projected to increase another 46 percent, from 34 million to 49 million. Many planners agree that if growth occurs in the same pattern as in the past — typically low- to medium-density housing built across the vast metropolitan area that is Southern California — any modest but arduously won gains made against congestion could easily be obliterated.

An alternative to this more common type of development has been dubbed "smart growth," a response to sprawl. In a smart-growth community, jobs, shopping, and entertainment are located closer to housing, and building uses are mixed. More housing, employment, services, and shopping are within walking, biking, or a short driving distance. The streets, sidewalks, and other public areas are designed to be pedestrian-friendly and transit oriented, making alternative transportation choices more attractive.

On the regional level, smart growth relies on "infilling" (rebuilding existing urban areas rather than developing land on the suburban fringe). Open spaces and farmland are preserved. By increasing population density in existing urban and suburban areas, smart growth seeks to provide more travel options, including attractive and viable alternatives to driving such as public transit and other modes of travel. "We can't sprawl our way out of problems," says USC professor Michael Dear, a smart-growth proponent. "Instead of growing together, we're growing apart."

Smart-growth critics disagree, charging that smart-growth-spawned density actually increases congestion and worsens pollution. Smart-growth adherents clamor for the empowerment of regional governments and the development of strict urban-growth boundaries; smart-growth critics argue just as passionately that growth and land-use issues should remain the purview of local governments.

As the smart-growth debate flares through the first years of this new century, Southern California will continue to employ a wide array of transportation demand management (TDM) tools that aim to provide more options and that can chip away at congestion. TDM techniques range widely, including programs to increase ridesharing, alternative work schedules, compressed workweeks, telecommuting, and alternative travel options.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District, for instance, has developed a number of ambitious regionwide programs encouraging mid- to large-sized employers to reduce auto emissions and congestion by lowering vehicle miles traveled during peak driving periods.

Typically, communities and employers use a mixture of TDM strategies; most of them offer options and incentives rather than dictate behavior. Such varied, diffuse, individual-based efforts should be intensified, because they mirror the individual and complicated travel needs of more Southern Californians.

Developing Coping Strategies
Ultimately, each citizen views the car — its costs as well as its benefits — through his or her own prism. And it is through these millions of small, daily, personal decisions that the most hope lies. In the years ahead, if congestion rises, so will the resourcefulness, resolve, and adaptability of individual drivers. "Everybody agrees that traffic is frightful," says PATH transportation engineer Joy Dahlgren. "But most people think their own commutes — their own routes and tactics — aren't so bad." Eventually, these coping mechanisms might include common-sense yet fundamental changes, such as people deciding to move closer to places of employment and education or driving to the mall at 11 a.m. instead of 5 p.m.

We must continue to think creatively but pragmatically about our car-oriented transportation landscape. We should demand innovative leadership from government, new technologies from industry, and reformed behavior from ourselves. Improvements in technology will help maintain or increase our mobility, as will transportation options such as walking, biking, or using public transit. Working together, we will again see daylight on our highways, not merely the glowing brake lights of the car in front of us.

Adaptive Cruise Control

Collisions are one type of "nonrecurrent congestion" that cause up to half the traffic delays in Southern California. Adaptive cruise control, now an option on a few luxury cars, is a first step toward avoiding crashes. Here's how Lexus's "dynamic laser cruise control" works in the company's flagship model, the LS 430: The system operates between 25 mph and 85 mph. The driver chooses a distance to maintain from a vehicle in front — short, medium, or long — and sets a desired cruising speed. A laser radar sensor in the front bumper sends rays forward to "see" if there's a vehicle ahead. Reflected rays are processed by a distance-control computer, which calculates the distance of the vehicle ahead and the speed it is traveling. If the vehicle ahead is moving more slowly than the LS 430, a computer closes down the LS 430's throttle to decelerate. If further deceleration is needed, a computer shifts the transmission down and, if necessary, applies the car's brakes in order to achieve the proper following distance. Below 25 mph, the system shuts down. A warning light comes on and a buzzer sounds to alert the driver that the LS 430 is closing on the car in front faster than the computer can slow it down and that the driver must apply the brakes to stop the car. If the cruise-control system slows the LS 430 sufficiently to regain the preset vehicle-to-vehicle distance, or if the car ahead speeds up or moves into another lane, the system gradually brings the LS 430 back up to the selected cruising speed. — J.L.

This is the fifth in a series of articles on transportation in Southern California. Previous articles, which covered California's roads, public transit, how transportation decisions are made, and transportation financing, can be found in the archival section of our website, www.aaa-calif.com/westways.

You are reading the September/October 2001 issue of Westways. Some information contained in this publication is time-sensitive, and the terms of some offers (cruise or vacation packages, for example) or services (provisions for roadside assistance, for example) might have been superseded by subsequent information and might no longer apply.