Chris Leckness

Commuters Can Now Compare Direct Drive with Traffic Optimized Drive Alternatives

Traffic.com unveiled today a beta version of a "fastest drive now" feature available at http://www.traffic.com. Traffic.com now provides commuters the ability to easily obtain simultaneous results for address-to-address drives and traffic optimized drives. Drivers across the U.S. can now obtain the point A-to-B travel information they need to make the best decisions about when to leave and the fastest drive to take. Traffic.com solutions are completely free to consumers.

Traffic.com users begin checking their drive times by entering a point
A origin and point B destination address. Site visitors instantly obtain
their basic directions-based drive information as well as an alternate
traffic optimized "fastest drive now" that takes into account the current
traffic and traffic trending conditions along the way. An accompanying
interactive traffic map provides color-coded highlighted drives, pinpointed
accident, construction and event icons as well as surrounding red, yellow
and green real-time traffic flow on area roadways.

 

With the ability to compare the side-by-side basic drive and traffic optimized drive information, users can easily assess the real-time conditions and select their best possible drive at that moment. Also provided with the beta release is dynamic interactive drive editing giving users the ability to instantly create custom drive time information simply by clicking and moving highlighted drives to alternate roadways on the map.

The Traffic.com "fastest drive" functionality is powered by NAVTEQ Map and NAVTEQ Traffic data and leverages a variety of industry tools, it allows users to:

• Input of A-to-B addresses on the site homepage and traffic content pages
• Compare directions-based drive times with traffic optimized fastest drives using: current drive times, At speed limit drive times, Total delay times
• Get total distance in miles for A-to-B fastest drives and direct drives
• Drag-and-drop map editing to create custom drive time information
• Obtain A-to-B directions for all drives
• Save drives and create MyTraffic custom alerts to be sent by email, voice, or SMS

In addition to the "fastest drive now" beta feature, Traffic.com visitors can also access traffic information using an array of free commute management solutions including:

• HTML email traffic alerts and scheduled reports sent to your PC
• Text-only email traffic alerts and scheduled reports sent to your mobile device
• Voice traffic alerts and scheduled reports sent to your cell phone or landline
• SMS text message updates obtained by texting a city code to TRAFC (87232)
• Toll-free traffic hotline updates obtained by calling 1-866-MY-TRAFC (1-866-698-7232)
• Wireless web (WAP) site traffic hotspot updates accessed with any web-enabled device at http://mobi.traffic.com

Source: NAVTEQ press release

hyedipin

I just do not trust any one of those traffic updates. Almost any time traffic condition can change in New York City. The fastest route would become a crawling nightmare, and within few minutes it may just open up because the guy who pulled over that got everyone's attention decided to start moving.

So, this might be useful in long distance driving, but otherwise I don't see any use for any type of traffic updates, other than scheduled road-work, emergency road closure or new bridge construction, etc.

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