Big Brother may not be spying on New Hampshire drivers, but sometimes it might seem like he's glancing over their shoulders.

Some states and cities either already have or are exploring the benefits of setting up a network that tracks cellphone travel speeds to monitor traffic flow on local roadways.

New Hampshire, however, has no such desire, said Denise Markow, program manager for the Transportation Management Center at the New Hampshire Department of Transportation.

“With the system we use here, there is no way to identify a vehicle,” Markow said. “We can tell if it's a small car, or a tractor-trailer, and provide real-time traffic information. But we can't identify a specific vehicle.”

The statewide system is designed to keep commuters apprised of the latest traffic conditions while respecting their privacy.

“We are aware people might have those concerns,” said Markow. “The information we use is completely anonymous. We can't identify a vehicle, or a phone, who owns it, or who is operating it. All we see is how fast the vehicle the phone is in is traveling through an area.”

The DOT posts that information online in the form of a traffic map. The map is color-coded, with green showing free-flowing traffic and red indicating a jam-up.

How things work

Cellphones work by constantly sending out electronic signals that get picked up by the nearest tower — a process commonly referred to as “pinging” the tower.

This process ensures calls move from one phone to another as quickly as possible. It also tells the service provider — AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, for example — where the caller's phone is located at any given moment.

Devices that gather traffic data are not new. But many of today's mobile phones, outfitted with GPS and able to access the Internet, are the latest method for traffic monitoring. Markow said New Hampshire has a contract with Google to receive traffic data from Google Maps for Mobile, an application that gathers information from GPS-enabled devices that have the Google Maps app installed in them.

When a user activates the “My Location” function on the app, it “sends anonymous bits of data back to Google describing how fast you're moving,” the company said in a statement, adding that the data is transmitted only when the phone is on and My Location is activated. The resulting information, compiled from thousands of phones, is used to project traffic patterns in a particular area.

Google said the information it passes along to the state DOT is limited to phone location, speed and direction of travel. Google cannot identify who owns the phone or provide any other information, the company said.

“We understand that many people would be concerned about telling the world how fast their car was moving if they also had to tell the world where they were going, so we built privacy protections in from the start,” Dave Barth, product manager for Google Maps, said in a statement.

“We only use anonymous speed and location information to calculate traffic conditions, and only do so when you have chosen to enable location services on your phone,” Barth said. “We use our scale (volume of phones) to provide further privacy protection — when a lot of people are reporting data from the same area, we combine their data together to make it hard to tell one phone from another. Even though the vehicle carrying a phone is anonymous, we don't want anybody to be able to find out where that anonymous vehicle came from or where it went, so we find the start and end points of every trip and permanently delete that data so that even Google ceases to have access to it.”

New Hampshire is part of an eight-state consortium, along with Alaska, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico and Vermont, that has shared the cost to design and develop the system that provides information to motorists. Iowa officials handle the contract with the software management company that maintains the network: Castle Rock Consultants (CRC) of Oregon. Markow said New Hampshire pays Iowa about $500 a month for its share of the network.

Google allows its traffic speed data to be displayed at websites free of charge, as long as the public has free access to the information. The money the state pays into the consortium is to maintain live updates for other factors that affect traffic flow, such as construction or police activity, which are not provided by the Google service.

Use of radar

In addition to monitoring routine traffic, the DOT keeps tabs on areas where road work is under way. Here, in addition to Google, it counts on radar equipment to relate vehicle movement where road work is under way, such as along Interstate 93 widening project near the Massachusetts border. The construction company doing the work provides the radar.

The radar equipment is contained in mobile solar traffic-monitoring units, the tall white or orange spires attached to what look like large solar panels on wheels set up at various intervals along a construction zone. The device projects a radar beam across the road surface, and when a vehicle breaks the beam, the device transmits information, including vehicle size and speed, back to the TMC.

Because speed is measured by the units, motorists might wonder whether law enforcement agencies are asking for the data to help catch speeders, but Markow said drivers shouldn't worry about that.

“We've never received a request like that from any law enforcement agency,” said Markow.

New Hampshire motorists can avail themselves of the DOT service by looking at the website, www.511nh.com, where the traffic maps are posted.

Drivers can use the information to find alternate routes around accidents or other slowdowns. Drivers with electric vehicles or hybrids can also find the best route to take to conserve battery power.

Some states and cities either have or are exploring the benefits of setting up a network that could track cell phones to generate traffic-control data systems. Missouri and Georgia did so in 2006 and 2007, and the city of Baltimore is close to launching a similar pilot program, according to a DOT spokesman in Baltimore.

While Markow's department could create an in-house monitoring system similar to the one slated to be used in Baltimore's pilot program, it isn't interested.

“This type of technology changes so quickly,” said Markow. “Personally, I wouldn't want to see the state spend the money to put in the infrastructure and staff it, only to see a new system make it outdated.''
pfeely@unionleader.com