Clark freely admits that one of his greatest character failings may be that he has a complete meltdown when he faces any traffic. It's gotten to the point that none of his staffers like to travel with him for events in congestion-dense Los Angeles!
The penny-pinching guru has long hoped we'd adopt something similar to what the Germans have on the Autobahn and some secondary roads. They have a system where your cell is tied into a real-time traffic management feed. Your travels can be sensed based on the way your cell signal moves from tower to tower. Drivers can then be notified by text message if they're heading into a tie-up and there's an alternate route available.
We haven't had any similar options available stateside -- until now. About 2 years ago, Clark discussed vaporware from a company called
Dash. They were touting an Internet-enabled GPS unit. Each Dash unit would send and receive real-time traffic info. The more Dash users in a metro area, the better the service would work. Well, now San Francisco is one city that's built up a critical mass of users.
How much does it cost? Too much for Clark's taste! Dash units run about $600 and then you still pay a monthly fee to have traffic data sent to you. There would have to be some really painful traffic to get Clark to subscribe at those prices. Early adopters, of course, will help drive the price down.
