Technology plus investment could eliminate congestion

An integrated transportation system combining today’s wireless and digital technologies with realistic investments in highway infrastructure could largely eliminate traffic congestion delays in metro Atlanta within 10 years. Within 20 years, the near-universal automation of automobile headway control should give current freeway systems all the capacity needed – even considering population increases.

The rise of services that use cell phone apps to enhance shared rides and cars, parking assistance and simple methods of making transportation payments is but a hint of what is possible. The bottom line? An information-intensive transit system can greatly reduce urban congestion at a fraction of the cost of a road-intensive solution.

Today, with Georgia Tech as a significant player, the state of Georgia can be a national leader in this high-tech approach to enhancing quality of life. It will require participation from major governmental and private parties, including the Georgia Department of Transportation, MARTA and the Atlanta Regional Commission, as well as local Community Improvement Districts and high-tech startups.

Let’s imagine that you and most other regular users of Atlanta’s roads were subscribers to a smartphone-based master app, which gives you great flexibility and ease of ride-sharing with options ranging from carpooling to MARTA. Such an app would tell you with near certainty the arrival time of a shared vehicle – whether it be a carpool, taxi, MARTA bus or train. It would alert you when it’s time to leave your location to be on time to catch the ride.

The app also would dynamically arrange for a shared ride or rental car with ease. There need be no fixed schedule like ordinary carpools have, but you could have a fixed schedule that is changeable in real time. The best shared ride could include transit.

You would have automated payments for shared rides, rental cars, buses and tolls. You don’t even need to take out your smartphone. This greatly simplifies the user experience.

If you drove your personal car to work, transit or even at home, it could be a shared car. That would allow others greater flexibility to make the decision not to drive to their destination.

Many related applications exist today. ZipCar is an early leader in the shared car industry, as is Uber. Here, not only the car is shared, but the driver is paid. These services help solve the “last-mile problem” of getting to and from a MARTA stop or carpool pickup point.

There are apps today that use cell phones to find and pay for parking. If the car is used for a shared ride, the system might give you a more convenient or free parking spot – perhaps at your employer’s location or a church lot, giving the church a small payment. Atlanta could greatly simplify and make parking more efficient and profitable if street parking was based on cell phones, rather than parking meters.

We all know of apps, such as Waze, Google Maps and MapQuest, that plan routes and make drives shorter using voice commands. Such features can be built into a master app.

Let’s consider a few near-future changes in the way our freeways operate. Today, we have a high-occupancy toll (HOT) lane on I-85 in metro Atlanta. A smartphone app could enable almost immediate conversion of our high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes to HOT lanes where those with the app get variable fares based on dynamic measurements of occupancy. Maybe four or more passengers actually get paid to use the lane.