Iowa State is paving the road for the information super-highway with new technology for central Iowa travelers.

Des Moines motorists may soon be able to check local traffic and road conditions on the Internet thanks to a research project led by ISU’s Center for Transportation Research and Education (CTRE).

Marilyn Kuntemeyer, CTRE senior project manager, said the first phase of the project began Tuesday and allows travelers using the Des Moines Metro bus service to view bus schedules and route maps on a new World Wide Web site.

“It’s up and working right now. We put a counter on the web site,” she said. “It will give us an indication as to whether people are interested in that kind of information.”

The project has been on the drawing board for about a year as part of an initiative to introduce intelligent transportation systems (ITS) to the Des Moines metropolitan area, Steve Spade, general manager for the Des Moines Metropolitan Transit Authority, said.

“Theoretically, a person can access the homepage and get into details [of] their commute,” Spade said. “They can even request personalized information. We can send them specific scheduling information to meet their needs.”

The web site is also able to calculate the user’s cost of driving to and from work for up to a year, he said.

To do this, he said, the user enters in what type of car he or she drives, the gas mileage it receives and the location of the user’s home and place of work. The computer then compares the calculated cost with the cost of taking the bus to work for a year.

In addition, users can register complaints from the web site “since we’re so heavily dependent on the customers and what they think. We anticipate a complaint or two,” he added.

If the CTRE receives a positive response from the public, Kuntemeyer said, the site will be expanded to include up-to-the-minute travel information such as news about accidents in the area, detours and traffic congestion.

ITS is already in place in many large cities around the country, Kuntemeyer said, including Los Angeles and Atlanta.

The project is funded by the Federal Highway Administration, the Iowa Department of Transportation and the Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning Organization.

The new web site’s address is http://metro.ctre.iastate.edu.