VOA慢速英語(yǔ):Navigation App Helps Predict Traffic Conditions

[00:00.00]From VOA Learning English, [00:03.05]this is the Technology Report in Special English. [00:07.33]From New Delhi to Beijing, [00:10.57]commuters spend a lot of time stuck in traffic. [00:15.69]In the United States, Los Angeles and San Francisco tie [00:22.32]for second place for having the worst traffic problems. [00:26.70]Washington, D.C. is in first place with the worst traffic, [00:32.08]according to the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. [00:37.00]In Los Angeles, [00:39.24]drivers spend sixty-one hours every year stuck in traffic. [00:44.87]These drivers know all too well how bad the traffic can be. [00:50.36]"It's a prison of cars. [00:52.00]There's too many cars, you can't move around a lot." [00:55.73]"I get very frustrated. I try to listen to some music, [01:00.71]maybe snap my fingers or something to try to pass the time." [01:04.79]Professor Cyrus Shahabi also knows about traffic jams. [01:09.22]He lives more than 65 kilometers from his office [01:13.75]at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles. [01:18.13]He is always late even with the help of a navigation system. [01:23.51]He and PhD student Ugur Demiryurek [01:27.72]decided to develop an app for that. [01:30.90]The ClearPath app claims to do [01:34.66]what other navigation systems cannot. [01:37.50]Professor Shahabi says his program uses historical data [01:43.42]to predict traffic conditions even before the driver leaves the house. [01:48.50]"What's unique is that we utilize a lot of data [01:52.34]that's currently become available including traffic data, [01:55.47]weather data, and we analyze that [01:59.41]so that we can predict what's going to happen [02:01.94]in front of you when you leave home." [02:03.49]ClearPath uses two and a half years worth of traffic data [02:08.02]from 9,000 sensors on the roads of Los Angeles. [02:12.79]It also collects information on accidents. [02:16.57]"Now you are driving and there's an accident in front of you, [02:20.16]but the accident is 20 minutes away. [02:22.15]And you know from historical data that [02:24.64]that accident would clear by the time you get there. [02:27.13]We can take that into account and send you towards the accident [02:31.31]because we think by the time you get there, [02:33.45]there wouldn't be any accident." [02:34.59]Professor Shahabi says his system does more than [02:38.57]just respond to current traffic conditions. [02:44.34]With ClearPath, he says, [02:48.03]a driver can enter what time he wants to leave [02:48.27]on a specific time and date, [02:50.21]and ClearPath will give the fastest route. [02:53.71]It looks at the entire road network, [02:57.08]including surface streets as well as highways, [03:00.52]before the driver hits the road. [03:03.36]Ugur Demiryurek says [03:06.50]they will launch the free ClearPath app [03:08.69]for roads in Los Angeles in two months. [03:11.77]In a year, he and Professor Shahabi hope to have ClearPath [03:17.21]available nationwide and overseas [03:20.44]once they can collect traffic data from other cities. [03:24.22]"I thought always that L.A. had the worst traffic, [03:27.21]but now I know that Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, [03:33.23]believe it or not, Singapore, [03:35.57]Hong Kong definitely are examples that can immediately utilize this." [03:41.94]Professor Shahabi hopes to license this new technology [03:45.72]to companies that already have navigation systems, [03:48.96]such as Google and Apple.

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