IDOT Determined to Keep Minutemen Busy
By Matt Wood in Miscellaneous on Sep 27, 2006 11:36AM
IDOT just launched a new traffic alert system that will send emails with customized traffic conditions directly to commuters. Drivers can sign up at the Illinois Traffic Alert System website and select from a number of fine-grained options for how and when they would like to be distracted from driving by trying to read their Blackberries. The alerts can provide standard travel times, average speeds, construction information, and accident reports, sent at preset times or when certain traffic conditions are met. IDOT says they are also working with Metra to develop a trip planner that compares trips by car or trains. An IDOT spokesman quoted in the article touts the new system as a step up from radio reports because commuters can receive the info exactly when they want it, instead of waiting a whole eight minutes to hear it on the radio.
Chicagoist is still trying to see the point. First, the alerts would only be of real benefit to people who could receive emails while in transit. If you checked your mail before you left, by the time you got in the car and hit the freeway, conditions could be drastically different. If you expand that potential user base to those with text-messaging capabilities, we don't want to think about thousands of drivers squinting at their cell phones to decipher the messages. The Tribune suggested that the distraction issue could be mitigated by linking the alerts with in car GPS systems, which sounds nifty, but useless for 95% of the cars on the road.
Even though the system smacks of "because we can" reasoning, we have to hand it to them for trying. The email features cost about $80,000 to bolt on to the Gary-Chicago-Milwaukee Corridor traffic site that feeds the data, which is peanuts in government terms. We can see one legitimate use for it though, and that's for mass transit riders to plug in the route they would be taking by car and receive emails reminding them of how many years they've added to their lives.