Mobile Millennium,

Mobile Millennium

Frances returns to the US to investigate a new, traffic-beating initiative spawned, developed and piloted in a state famous for its congestion: California. After meeting the brains behind the device, and talking to the ordinary citizens trialling it, she decides to give the device a go herself. To her surprise, she forms one friendship she really wasn’t expecting…

As a journalist, I have rather mixed feelings about my mobile phone. On the one hand, yes, it keeps me in touch with editors, producers and contacts, but on the other, the constant barrage of text messages, emails and calls can make me want to dig a hole and bury it - like my brother’s spaniel once did with a particularly noisy toy.

So when I learnt about a new mobile phone application that turns you from persecuted hack into traffic dodger extraordinaire, I was keen to learn more. Living in London, a city that boasts some of the heaviest traffic in the world, here was an ‘app’ (note the jargon) that could turn my mobile from disposable to indispensable fast.

My first appointment in the pretty city of San Francisco is with Anu Sridharan. Recently enrolled in the state’s work force and driving only a matter of months, the device she says is a Godsend for nervous new drivers like her still unfamiliar with a city.

Getting Anu not just from A to B, but from A to B in the fastest-possible, real traffic time, Mobile Millennium lets her concentrate on her driving (San Fran’s infamous stop-and-look protocol does need some attention) without worrying about getting lost, fined, or arriving late for meetings because of accidents, traffic jams, road works or anything else.

‘As a newbie on the consulting scene, working with clients sometimes for the first time, you can’t just roll up late for an appointment’, Anu declares with a laugh. I choose not to tell her about the day that bad traffic outside Paris once had me, a novice driver, hurtling down the motorway at 136mph in order to make an appointment with a ferry.

‘But what about Big Brother?’, I later ask Quinn Jacobson at the Nokia Research Centre in Palo Alto, the brains behind Mobile Millennium. ‘If your movements can be tracked all day all across the city, that’s got to have implications for us all… truant kids, errant husbands… speeding journalists?’ I enquire slightly nervously.

‘No, no, the signals revealing the users’ identity are scrambled – they can’t be traced… The privacy issue is taken very, very seriously here in the US’, Quinn states with a firm nod.

To my surprise, my next appointment - with UC Berkeley professor of engineering, Alex Bayen - leaves me stunned by the sheer simplicity of the device. This impression is later confirmed by another trail user and commuter, Kevin Nealy in San Jose, and later by my own experience driving back to San Francisco.

As I cruise along the Californian highways , I ask myself if it’s possible that such a simple gadget, one that’s relatively cheap to buy and operate, that’s so easy to use and manage, can save us so much time and money, reduce our exposure to stress and pollution, and benefit the world’s economy and environment?

My mobile phone starts to ring. I curse it automatically, but as I take the call, I suddenly start to see the little device in rather a new light…

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