From Xconomy Seattle, "CEO Dale Keep of RoadWyze (Walla Walla, WA) regaled the audience with stories from his 36 years of working with government agencies dealing with snow, ice, and other weather conditions on roads and highways. His company, founded in 2004, places wireless sensors in roads to communicate things like air temperature, surface temperature, humidity, and pavement conditions (ice or no ice) to computers in road-management vehicles. “The solution is data,” he said.
The idea is that all this data—the sensors could be placed every mile or so—will let authorities spend less money on salt and road chemicals by pinpointing where they’re really needed. It will also make roads safer for drivers. A case study in Maine suggests the technology could reduce the $32 million spent on salt in the winter of 2008-09 by about one-third.
RoadWyze currently has four employees and a number of patents pending. Its latest prototype sensor systems will be complete in July, Keep said."
Real time information, such as road traffic density, surface condition and current/projected weather data are crucial planning inputs to motor carrier operations seeking to reduce delays, accidents and overtime. The emergence of additional real time information sources, in conjunction with crowd-sourcing traffic data from companies like Waze-see earlier Blog on them--are building the basis for a whole new traffic management space as our nation's highways become more crowded and innovative delivery scheduling solutions become the norm.
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