Font ResizeBay Area motorists with GPS-equipped cell phones can tap into a new technology tonight that promises to provide quicker, more accurate traffic information to avoid gridlock.
Effective midnight , researchers from UC Berkeley and the Nokia phone company are rolling out pilot software that can be downloaded for free onto cell phones to turn them into roving traffic probes. The mobile phones will transmit information about those cell phone users' driving speed, direction and location and get back instant information on where cars are stuck in logjams or speeding along without interference.
Researchers predicted the system —- first of its kind in the world — will transform traffic monitoring by giving motorists quicker and more accurate traffic information on more roads and highways.
"As we have entered the era of the mobile Internet, cellular devices are providing us with ubiquitous sensing capabilities that will rapidly revolutionize location-based services," said Alexandre Bayen, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of systems engineering.
The service will gain accuracy as more people sign up for it.
Bayen said the operators of the new traffic information system will not be able to identify the individual cell phone users.
Directions for downloading the new software from the Mobile Millennium project will be available online at http:traffic.berkeley.edu. To prevent an overload in online registration, software
project organizers will limit the signups to 100 people a day for the first month of the project.
