Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Boston's Intelligent Transportation System

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2003 15:01:59 -0500

-------- Original Message --------
From: [email-masked]
Subject: Boston's Intelligent Transportation System

http://www.itsa.org/ITSNEWS.NSF/4e0650bef6193b3e852562350056a3a7/e91c1510b75ce99
d85256cfa0006b7b0?OpenDocument

Honeywell Brain to Think for Boston's 'Big Dig' 
By Tim McLaughlin 
Reuters News Service 

BOSTON, MA, Mar. 30, 2003 - (Reuters) This city's "Big Dig" highway project - 
expected to cost nearly $15 billion - has busted budgets and blown through 
deadlines with impunity. 

But for that amount of dough, the finished product promises to be more than 
just another mindless stretch of underground asphalt. The Big Dig, the nickname 
for Boston's Central Artery/Tunnel project, will have a big, pulsating brain. 

Wired with more than 2.6 million feet of fiber-optic cable, the Big Dig's brain 
will control more than 400 video cameras beneath the city and alert motorists 
to hazards by breaking into their radio broadcasts. Imagine a Boston Red Sox 
broadcast being interrupted with a warning for motorists to avoid a stalled car 
in the left lane. 

The brain will monitor for pollution inside the highway's tunnel network, 
advise human controllers on how to respond to emergencies and check 40,000 data 
points every three seconds. 

Officials at Honeywell International Ltd., which created the high-tech central 
nervous system for the brain, describe the layout as one of the most 
sophisticated traffic management networks in the world. Bostonians, famous for 
dropping their R's when they speak, might just say, "It's wicked smaaht." 

It had better be. 

Boston drivers have endured traffic snarls for more than a decade as Big Dig 
workers tunneled under the city to build a new central thoroughfare. In the mid-
1980s, the public works project was expected to cost some $2 billion. Now, it 
stands as the most expensive public works project in U.S. history. 

The Big Dig still isn't finished -- it may be done in 2005 -- but on Sunday the 
northbound lanes of Interstate 93 will open for traffic. Highway officials 
estimate up to 250,000 vehicles a day will use the northbound lanes. 

Drivers coming from the west and south of the city will be able to enter the 
underground tunnel, travel under downtown Boston, and then up and onto the new 
Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge that spans the Charles River. 

"Building a nuclear power plant is a little easier because it's contained on a 
fixed site," said George Gram, a former nuclear power plant construction 
expert. Gram is in charge of the $200 million traffic management system that 
Honeywell designed and installed for the Big Dig. 

The U.S. Department of Transportation has estimated that traffic congestion 
costs the country about $100 billion a year in lost productivity. So-called 
intelligent transportation systems, such as the one designed by Honeywell, have 
become popular with city planners because they allow existing highways to 
handle more traffic without pouring more concrete. 

U.S. highway authorities estimate that equipping one mile of freeway with 
electronic traffic surveillance costs about $1 million while construction of 
one mile of urban freeway costs about $40 million. 

Nevertheless, when pressed for a prediction on whether the Big Dig would 
alleviate Boston's big-time traffic jams once and for all, Honeywell's Gram 
steered clear of giving a forecast. 

"I'm not a traffic engineer," Gram said. "And I'm not going to answer that 
question."

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From: "Smith, William E. (US-BKTN-Telecom)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 07:16:10 -0500

All the aggravation and money spent on this project and I still sit in
traffic for an hour... The in-tunnel antenna system works very well for AM
broadcast. Nextel fails about 1/3 of the way through, but my Verizon phone
worked all the way thorough. Apparently Boston EMS has shut down their
tunnel radio system due to problems.

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