There can be little doubt that this is the information age. An enormous amount of information is now being made available to the public, in real-time, using a variety of different media. You can receive this information using the Internet, cable and satellite television, cellular telephones, pagers, and radios.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the transportation sector. Airline schedules, train schedules, street maps, and constructions reports are all readily available and more information is on the way. Various surveillance technologies are now being used to collect real-time traffic information that will soon be made available to the public (e.g., inductive loops on the NJ Turnpike and automatic vehicle identification systems on the Tappan Zee Bridge and the Garden State Parkway).

In the future, travelers and commercial vehicle operators will be able to use this information to make better decisions using Transportation Information and Decision Engineering (TIDE) technologies as illustrated in Figure 1. First, data about the state of the transportation system will be collected using a variety of different sensors. These data will then be filtered and fused, in order to eliminate everything that is extraneous and extract/synthesize everything that is important. Next, these data will be used to forecast the future state of the transportation system. Finally, both the current information and the forecasts will be used to help travelers make decisions.

Figure 1. An Overview of TIDE Systems

TIDE systems are likely to be used in a number of different ways. At Newark airport a TIDE system could supply you with information about departures and arrivals, the location of airport services (e.g., restaurants, baggage claim areas, ground transportation), the availability of vacant spaces in different parking lots, and much more. On a street in Trenton, a TIDE system could supply you with information about points of interest, bus routes/schedules, the current position and/or anticipated arrival times of buses, the location of pedestrian walkways, and traffic congestion levels. Then, the TIDE system could help you make the decisions that are right for you. That is, it could help you choose the best route, mode of travel, departure time, and destination that meet your particular constraints. TIDE systems can also be used by freight carriers to improve their decisions. For example, an independent trucker in the process of making both pick-ups and deliveries could use a TIDE system to learn that the freight train she/he is going to meet is late, and re-schedule her/his stops.