Odds and Ends

I have run across a number of interesting items of late and wanted to bring them to your attention. First of all, scientists at Newcastle University in the UK have developed a new bit of technology that can tell the exact level of vehicle emissions at any given time. It's called the Mobile Environmental Sensing System Across a Grid Environment, or MESSAGE for short. It produces real-time data on traffic-related pollutants such as carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and can even meter noise levels. The sensors or "motes" are placed at regular intervals along targeted roads. The data is then fed back and can be accessed in real-time via Google map although I would imagine you would have to know where to look for it first. This information would seem to be particularly valuable to cyclists, joggers and pedestrians who might be exposed to these pollutants on a daily basis. It sounds like something that would help us make better, more informed decisions about where we want to be and where not.

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Not all technology is good or helpful. The Los Angeles Times recently ran an article about how GPS systems and factory-installed "black boxes" (event data recorders in engineer's lingo) can keep late-model vehicles under surveillance all-day, every day. They can provide evidence for law enforcement, for insurance companies and even for lawyers in divorce cases. They can do so by revealing, in the case of the GPS devices, where we are or where we have been at any given moment. In the case of the black boxes they can tell crash investigators, the courts and the insurance companies how fast we were driving before a crash or whether we were wearing our seatbelts or how hard we hit the brakes. The highest-profile use of GPS data was the Scott Peterson case where the information was used to establish guilt in the murder of his wife. It all raises some very good questions about how much information we have to give out without our knowledge (most people do not know that they have a device in their car that can report their driving behavior). It's not just for those who drive vehicles. Those SmarTrip cards that we use on a daily basis can be used to tell where and when we entered a given Metro station or what bus we got onto. That information can be subpoenaed and used in court the same way our credit cards can.

Technology can make our lives easier but it can also be used against us.

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Here's something that totally took me by surprise: There is a company that publishes a guide to parking garages and outdoor lots in New York City. The $14 "Park It! NYC: Complete Guide to Parking Garages" is in its third edition. It promises to help users "save gas... don't overpay for parking... save money... save time" and is broken into sections that include breakouts for SUV and Oversized vehicle charges, parking in the theatre district, nearby gas stations and a lot more. It just boggled my mind that there would be a demand for such a thing and that it's in its third version. The real shocker though is that it lists a total of 1,093 parking garages and outdoor lots. And that's just in Manhattan! Who knew? Of course, if you're crazy enough to drive in Manhattan you might be crazy enough to need a guide like this. I wonder how many garages there are in D.C.

EDR photo: www.gm.com

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Steve Eldridge is a long-time reporter, observer and commentator on the Washington region's transportation issues. You can contact him directly by writing to: Steve@SprawlandCrawl.com. Unless otherwise requested, letters or portions of letters can be used within future columns. Letter writers will be identified by their first name and city/neighborhood.

Comments

[Steve]

I have heard that 1.3 million (million!) cars drive into Manhattan below 86th street every weekday. That's more cars than people riding the subway, believe it or not. Where do they all go? At 150 square feet per parking space, that's 7 square miles of parking.

[RoadSharing.com]

I want to point out an interesting new service www.roadsharing.com
a good free resource for commuters.