GPS Business Tracking — User Content Drives Community-Enhanced Traffic

There is no need to spring for exspenive traffic senaors and other high ticket items to imporve your traffic flow, reduce pollution and aid your community businesses:

User Content Drives Community-Enhanced Traffic

Starting November 10, drivers in Northern California’s Bay Area began participating in a project that turns their GPS-enabled phones into traffic probes used to collect data on traffic flow and travel times.

The Mobile Millennium pilot project of the University of California at Berkeley is a collaboration between researchers from UC Berkeley’s College of Engineering, the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, mapmaker Navteq, and UC Berkeley’s California Center for Innovative Transportation.

Traffic data collected by Navteq receives a boost from drivers.

As of November 20, almost 3,000 volunteers had downloaded the software, though not all have compatible phones. “Over the next weeks, well be adding more models of phones to our list of supported phones,” said Quinn Jacobson, research leader at Nokia Research Center. The pilot will operate for up to six months. Up to 10,000 volunteers can participate.