Online Traffic Information SystemsReview of existing sites

Catherine PlaisantUniversity of Maryland

3-12-2000

Sources of lists of relevant sites:

http://members.tripod.com/buckybeaver/Links to all DOTs traffic info (note that Maryland is there of course but is is hard to find the Chart in it)

http://www.itsonline.com/traftech2.htmlITSonline magazine

http://www.search-beat.com/traffic.htmWebsite with national and international sites.

List of sites mentioned in this report (Maryland was not included here)

Phoenix 2 Atlanta 4 San Antonio 6 San Diego 7 Los Angeles 8Minneapolis 9Paris, France 11Belgium 14 Rotterdam, Netherlands 15 Madrid, Spain 16Toronto, Canada 17Athens, Greece 18Miscellaneous (VA snow, Seattle intersections, Texas road closure, Smart Traveler)

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PHOENIX , Arizona http://www.azfms.com/Travel/freeway.html

Nice palette: Green = fast, 2 levels of yellow / orange, red = slowBut the purple is ambiguous, is it fast speed or accident?The choice of color is intuitive but the legend is not very good has it does not represent the descending order of the speeds. The Black for no communication probably catches the eye too much (and puts focus on areas not covered).

No message board or SAR I could find.

The choice of camera is not on the map, too bad! Then when one selects a camera, the page cannot tell which way it is pointing and sends you to a page showing possible views and letting users figure out where the current view is pointing to, West or East? North or South?

2

Nice zoomable map of closure and restriction but icon overlap is a problem. The list follows but there is not coupling between the map and the list.

Link to bus service page that links to maps too.

3

ATLANTA

Georgia http://www.georgia-navigator.com/tview.html

Apparently continuous color coding and fairly small link coloring (enough sensors?)

Zoomed views per areas (no manual control of zoom). Control of what icons one sees (but I would often want to see them all probably)There is a mixture of point and link speed display, depending on the density of sensors.

DMS messages are shown on the map and a click shows the message. BUT the icon on the map does not suggest if there is a message or not, so one has to try all DMSs one by one, and would never guess an "icy condition” message for example.

A click on incident gives info and estimated time to clear, nice!

AccidentNorthbound I-85 RAMP TO GA 400

Fulton County High Impact

1 Right Lane Affected Expected Cleanup at

11 February, 11:26 AM

Cameras can be accessed easily, direction not always available (but most of the time is, even though not always easy to figure out....)

4

E.g. this camera is the one just on the left of the road work sign. It says that it is looking west so is it pointed at the west branch of the highway? or is the label wrong? the roadwork seems to be on the side of the camera, but the road sign icon is not clear about where the roadwork is east or west bound? Users will interpret the position of the icon very literally and be confused if really is different than what is shown on the map.

Estimated travel time provided in separate table, or it can be seen on some DMS (if you poke long enough to find and read the info on the signs)

5

SAN ANTONIO

San Antonio http://www.transguide.dot.state.tx.us/map/ccmap

Link view only. Note that the links separations are marked so users can tell what the units are. The "no data" color is the brightest! Not a good idea.

The "incidents" map is different than the "current conditions" map. What 2 maps?? Users are likely to not even notice that there is another map.

Each sign location can be seen on the "current conditions" map (not the incident one). One can also see if it has a message (yellow) or not (gray). A click brings the message on top. Groups of signs can be seen at once. But I almost found it by chance... Users have to click on "equipment" then pick a highway section, then see the set of signs. Without knowing the area, I can't guess what order they are in (travel order? or geographic order?), but a commuter might just want to see the set of signs, so both options make sense.

6

California DOT

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/roadinfo/hi.htm

Enter a highway number and get a list of problems, restrictions etcor zoom on a map of CA until you can click on a highway name, then get the list.

Sensor data maps for San Diego and LA

SAN DIEGO

http://www.dot.ca.gov/dist11/d11tmc/sdmap/mapmain.html

Can't tell if link view or sensor view with many sensors? Interesting list names with color coding too. But I can't tell if they are downtoan streets or areas of the map. Note that there is a red word but no red on the map (!)

List of highways for link to specific textual list of problems.

The "incident log" gives all incidents in about 12 hours (in a list). No VMS or camera I can see.

7

LOS ANGELES

http://traffic.maxwell.com/la/index.html

Here is a good example to show that the scale of the map as an effect of the link vs sensor view problem. Here the map coverage is so great that showing sensor coverage is fine even if there are not too many sensors on the road! The map resolution is such that it "appears" that the coverage is almost complete even though it only display info at sensor location. This would not be as effective with the number of sensors in Maryland today.

Incident list (not on map)

Video: not implemented yet

BAY AREA TRAFFIC

http://www.kcbs.com/traffic/ALL.html

only a list of accident per area, no map.

8

MINNEAPOLIS

Seems to have several competing systems showing traffic info.

This first one has a nice consistent link length, pretty small for this map scale, which make showing the links the right thing to do.

The next one shows a map with icons, one can clicks on an area and get a menu of incidents, roadwork etc.

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And a third system is Mapquest with a list of accidents, here 2 accidents.

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