And 880 is jammed after the crash of another driver trying to check traffic on his handheld
I don’t think Microsoft had improving its relations with Silicon Valley in mind when it came up with its latest addition to Live Search Maps, but it’s a feature that should prove popular in an area where freeways have nicknames like the “Nasty Nimitz.” Today, for 72 U.S. cities, Microsoft introduced ClearFlow, a new traffic and routing system that uses sophisticated artificial intelligence and predictive modeling along with real-time data to offer directions that take traffic conditions into account.
The idea began, as so many great ones do, with a frustrated scientist, in this case Eric Horvitz, an artificial-intelligence researcher at Microsoft. Stuck in Seattle traffic in 2003, he set his navigation device to reroute him using side streets, only to be directed into a worse tie-up than he left. “It hit me that we had to do all the side streets,” he said. “We really needed to understand the whole city.” Over the next few years, Horvitz’s team collected trip data, built algorithms, assembled a predictive model for traffic on Seattle’s roads, then adapted the model to other cities. As the New York Times reports, “The city models are combined with live traffic data generated by networks of highway sensors to create about 60 million road segments, allowing the system to predict congestion based on time of day, weather and other variables like sporting events.” Horvitz is hyped about seeing his concept become reality. “I consider this to be the moon mission of our machine-learning research,” he said. “I’m still buzzing with the glow that this is actually possible.”
Being a resident of the Seattle area I can tell you that there is not enough computing power on the Planet Earth to accomplish this! However, I hope that I am wrong.
I traveled all over Japan in 2003 from Hiroshima to Tokyo with a friend who had a satellite navigation system in a now ancient Mitsubishi 4WD SUV. It had the capability to direct us all over the greater Tokyo area using side streets, detours, etc. noting turnoffs to avoid traffic less than 150 meters ahead of our routes. At that time they were using US satellites data to update the traffic software. It was replete with St. names and daily construction projects. That was only 14+ years ago. Where are we today?
Horvitz could have saved himself several years by taking a quick trip to Japan in 2003. It was already fait accompli.
Yeah I tried all the side streets when I was commuting from Danville to Fremont. Yeah. That works. Yeah. NOT.
Hate to be cynical, but if this product dominated the market, then wouldn’t a slowdown on the freeway cause the software to re-route pretty much everyone to the same side-street simultaneously - resulting in the mother of all traffic jams?
And if I *really* wanted to get to work quick, couldn’t I just hack into the system to clear the freeways so I had them all to myself?
(And bob carnahan, “…in 2003…” and “…only 14+ years ago…” - is it 2017 *already*?
So we should use technology to insure that every possible street is fully congested all the time? This may be someone’s idea of progress, but not mine. And just imagine the lawsuits when homeowners find that their street has been designated an alternative to the freeway.