On the Road to 511

Aaron is the former editor of ProjectsAtWork.com

  ProjectsAtWork  

San Francisco BayArea's regional transportation agency is merging into the fast lane in a region-by-region effort to create a national travel information phone system.

In an emergency, you can call 911. In need of a phone number: 411, of course. And someday, in a traffic jam, 511 may be just as ubiquitous. There are currently more than 300 travel information phone numbers across the country, but the services they provide, from road conditions to roadside assistance, are confined to local areas-and the numbers aren't widely used (or remembered).

For someone driving across state or county lines, the idea of accessing travel information by phone has always been impractical. That's why, back in July 2000, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) assigned 511 as the nation's three-digit touch-tone connection to travel information, a testament to its importance in a mobile nation. The designation was also the official go-ahead on a multitiered project, with hundreds of public and private stakeholders, that is now picking up steam.

The project, in fact, is actually dozens of subprojects at the state and municipal levels-each one at various stages with different scopes, but all challenged to meet at a common ground of "look and feel" sometime in the not-so-distant future (see "Two-Way Street").

In the San Francisco Bay Area, the Metropolitan …

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