Lower Wacker Beacons Mean No Lost Drivers In Movie Car Chases

CHICAGO — Getting lost along Lower Wacker Drive after traveling into GPS "dead zones" might be a thing of the past — like asking for directions at the corner gas station — thanks to a joint effort between the city, Chicago-based parking app SpotHero and the navigation app Waze. This trio is working together to equip Chicago's underground streets with more than 400 special beacons that will still allow drivers to know where they are even if GPS doesn't, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Installed along 5 miles of the city's lower-level streets, such as Lower Wacker Drive, the beacons would provide signals that could be used for positioning, the report stated. All a driver needs is a Bluetooth cellphone and the Waze navigation app, the report added.

But what if another navigation app, such as Google Maps, is a driver's digital map du jour? Will the beacons work with that software? No, not when the beacons start working next week. But Waze, which is owned by Google, will let other companies' apps receive the nonproprietary signal, according to the Tribune.

Execution of the project has been divided among the three stakeholders. Waze provides the intellectual property behind this alternative positioning system, and SpotHero has purchased and donated the beacons to the city. The devices are being physically installed — about every 100 feet along the affected streets — by the Chicago Department of Transportation.

The benefits of the beacons are two-fold:

• Drivers rely heavily on GPS to get around, and when they're cut off from it, they tend to slow down, Gil Disatnik, who heads the Waze Beacons program, told the Tribune. The beacons should help eliminate that and create better traffic flow.
• Customers for SpotHero, which has invested $15,000 in the beacons, have canceled reservations because they couldn't find parking garages with underground street entrances. The beacons should eliminate that issue for the parking app.

While these new devices could see a big effect on the small (smartphone) screens of Chicagoans, they might also have unintended consequences for the city on the big (film) screen. Will motorists on Lower Wacker Drive ever have to worry about getting lost during high-speed movie car chases?

Sure, Batman probably uses a super-powerful Bat-GPS in the Batmobile when he's trying to elude police …

… or keep up with the Joker.

But what about two regular guys like Jake and Elwood Blues? Instead of relying on Elwood's "estimations" that they were "very close to the Honorable Richard J. Daley Plaza," the brothers could just use the Waze app on their cellphone to make sure they knew where they were going.

Then the movie would have to be called "The Bluetooth Brothers."

More via the Chicago Tribune

John Belushi (left) and Dan Aykroyd in "The Blues Brothers" (Screen shot from video via Universal Pictures | YouTube)