Road to nowhere.

• Author: Lowe, Marcia D.
• Position: Introduction of intelligent vehicle/highway systems, IVHS

A proposed technological cure for smog, gridlock, and traffic accidents actually may exacerbate the problems it is supposed to solve - yet within it lies a golden opportunity that the experts have overlooked.

Be careful when you make a wish; you just might get what you ask for. The legendary King Midas, who asked that everything he touched turn to gold, learned this lesson the hard way-when not only his palace and possessions turned to gold, but his own daughter as well.

In experiments throughout the industrial world, engineers are working feverishly to fulfill a wish that could backfire as badly as the one in this ancient Greek tale. They are designing - and in some cases already testing - a panoply of futuristic transport systems in which computer-equipped "smart" cars drive themselves on "smart" roads. The researchers' hope is that these electronic devices will expand the capacity of existing highways several times over.

News stories about Intelligent Vehicle/ Highway Systems (FMS) have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Dazzled by images of tightly spaced traffic hurtling along highways that never get clogged, readers envision themselves reading the newspaper or even taking a nap while their cars drive them to work. The tone of much IVHS reporting seems infused with equal parts of fantasy and destiny.

And destiny it may well be. Proponents of IVHS - chiefly automotive and electronics industries and transport research institutions - have convinced many policymakers that smart cars and highways can solve an array of transport problems. With computers in charge of everything from timing the traffic signals to deciding which route each car should take, enthusiasts expect even heavy traffic to flow smoothly. The result, they say, will be great reductions in fuel use, smog, and accidents.

Japan and several European countries have already sunk billions of dollars into IVHS projects undertaken jointly by automakers, governments, and universities. American PMS researchers are sprinting to catch up, with a zeal reminiscent of the races to build an atomic bomb in the 1940s and to put a man on the moon in the 1960s. Nearly two dozen U.S. smart car and highway projects are now in the works, and supporters are calling for $200 billion in public and private investment in IVHS by the year 2010. Since the rest of the world followed the United States into the automobile age and continues to pursue the U.S. highway model, other countries are likely to plunge into IVHS too, including developing countries that can little afford costly mistakes.

With smart cars and highways still in the experimental stages and governments considering heavy commitments to FMS, it is high time some important questions were raised. Since IVHS consists largely of unproven technologies, an obvious query is, Will it work? The claims of the IVHS industry are impressive, but many of them reflect more conjecture than experience. No one knows whether the systems would succeed if fully implemented.

Nor does anyone know just how many people would benefit from widespread adoption of IVHS - and, perhaps more important - how many would be worse off. To take advantage of the intelligent system, individual drivers would have to acquire the smart car technology. Would drivers who could only afford "regular" cars be left in the lurch? And what about people who don't own an automobile at all?

Major transport improvements are nearly always costly, and IVHS is already illustrating that principle in spades - as even the most ardent IMS supporters concede. In much of the world, including the United States, public budgets and infrastructures are both in a state of crisis. That raises the obvious - though curiously overlooked - question of how governments can justify massive spending for projects whose net benefits to the public have yet to be established.

It also raises what is probably the most fundamental question to be asked about IVHS: Should we even want to expand the capacity of our highways? In a world increasingly beset by traffic jams, traffic accidents, and traffic-generated oil dependence, smog, and global warming, does it make sense to try to accommodate still more car traffic?

Greek Gods and Gadgets

IVHS is distinguished by its ambitious scope and audacious claims. Several smart projects in Europe are named with Olympian flair - among them, PROMETHEUS (the Program for European Traffic with Highest Efficiency and Unprecedented Safety), DEMETER, SIRIUS, and PANDORA (Prototyping A Navigation Database Of Road-network Attributes). With millions of dollars in public and private money going into these efforts, investors had better hope that the schemes' proclaimed benefits are not as stretched as the names.

Taking car gadgetry to unprecedented heights, IVHS (called Road Transport Informatics in Europe) consists of electronic communication systems that seek to do five things: automatically regulate the flow of traffic; give information to drivers on up-to-the-moment road conditions; take over some of the driving; help track and guide commercial fleets; and make buses and car- and vanpools more efficient and convenient to use.

Although some precursors to IVHS technology - such as anti-lock brakes and cruise control - are already standard features in many new automobiles, the new generation of smart equipment hails from more exotic terrain. Borrowing technologies from air traffic control towers and smart bomb guidance systems, IVHS would establish direct, simultaneous communication between drivers, traffic control centers, and the roads themselves. Drivers would punch in their destination on a dashboard control panel while sensors along the road would detect the vehicles' location and speed. All this information would be processed by a central station. There, computers would re-broadcast signals to drivers, advising them which route to take.

Proposals for the later stages of IVHS have an air of technological fantasy. Fully automated cars would drive themselves along the highway, guided by wires embedded in the road. Once drivers keyed in their destination, they could just sit back and enjoy the ride...