In order to analyze the viability of a road project and for its posterior operation, it is key to know in great detail the portential user market.

New technologies allow the anonymous tracking of mobile phone signals, both from the telephone network as through Bluetooth and Wifi. This allows to identify routes, road tolls if there’d be, and also the trip frequency.

This allows to make better market research, improving the limitations of traditional user polls, whilst also improving the operation: better knowledge of travel patterns allows to anticipate traffic control necessities in real time.

In the future, highway operations, specially in the metropolitan area, will include intelligent traffic management (within the intelligent transport systems), with complex prioritization of information and control measures (such as the ‘managed lanes’ from the USA). It is only possible with deep knowledge of user travel patterns.