The average American driver wastes 38 hours sitting in traffic and it is a major headache for those of us in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle scored number eight on the INRIX Traffic Scorecard. Seattle is one of the most congested metro areas in the nation and has some of the most congested individual roads in the entire country. Among these was a nine-mile, southbound stretch of Interstate 5 by Joint Base Lewis-McChord, which ranked as the 11th most congested corridor in the nation in 2012.

Washdot, as it is known around these parts, is looking to help offset traffic in any way it can by tracking Bluetooth® devices—to be clear, they aren’t tracking conversations, just the signal. The Transpo Group set up Bluetooth readers called BlueMAC to collect a small portion of the individual media access control address, or MAC, transmitted by enabled Bluetooth devices like headsets, phones and cars.

“We cannot track people or hear conversations, nor do we want to. All we know is the signal,” said Jon Pascal, principal at Transpo Group, the Kirkland-based company deploying the readers. “We don’t know where it’s coming from; we don’t know if it’s a car or a phone. There’s no way to track it.”

These studies are usually done manually with people photographing license plates but “doing it manually with people with cameras would have been completely impractical,” said Bill Elliott regional DOT coordinator. Even though not everyone has a Bluetooth device, the study should capture almost one-quarter of the traffic. Once the data is in, Washdot can start to take action for rerouting and arterial improvement to help take the pressure off.

(Credit: Nanci Taplett)