US System for Tracking Traffic Flow Is Faulted

The federal government has committed more than $50 million to build a sophisticated highway traffic monitoring system that has produced unreliable data and cannot freely share live reports on highway bottlenecks with the public, an audit by the Transportation Department's inspector general has found. Thousands of tiny traffic-monitoring sensors are being installed along highways in 27 cities nationwide under the program. The monitors collect information on lane occupancy and traffic speed, and the data then is supposed to be transmitted live to electronic message boards and other devices. But the decade-old agreement that the department signed with Traffic.com, the contractor hired to install the system, included a provision that granted the contractor exclusive control of the data, says the report. That means Traffic.com, a subsidiary of Navteq of Chicago, can sell the data to commercial providers like The Weather Channel or post it on its own Internet site. But state and local governments that are partners in the project have been told they are not allowed to share the information with the public unless they pay a fee, the report says.