Accuracy of the traffic reports

[Bo]

Originally Posted by johnsonkk

When shopping for GPS's, there were some that had traffic reports broadcasted thru them but it was a subscription service. Does anyone know if these GPS subscription traffic reports are more accurate? How do they get the traffic feeds for the GPS's?

I have traffic on my GPS. I assume it automatically pulls its info from the public databases of traffic information.

As an experiment I heeded the GPS traffic information once in Austin and it took me on a 10-mile detour. About midway into the detour, the accident cleared and the GPS wanted me to make a U-turn and head back in the opposite direction to return to the original route. I stuck with the detour because it was more interesting than I-35.

The GPS info might be better than the radio. It is nice to have accidents and lane closures automatically plotted on a map.

[TexHwyMan]

Most stations subscribe to a traffic reporting service. Here in SA, there used to be a company called "Traffic Central" that did that. They setup one of the city's first computer bulletin board services back in the late '80s, which of course I dialed-into daily. I got to see their operation once in the KCI Tower on I-10. They were subsequently purchased by MetroNetworks I believe. Other stations like WOAI and KTSA do their own traffic gathering and reporting. As a footnote, Shelly Miles on WOAI-TV got her start at Metro Traffic. She was the first on-camera traffic reporter on local TV back when she worked for them, and then WOAI-TV hired her and brought their traffic reports in-house.

Originally Posted by slaleman

Didn't there used to be a guy in a helicopter?

Yep, back in the '80s, "Captain K" on KTSA. He was a legendary traffic reporter here for decades, and pretty well-known in the business nationally.

Another thing that would be nice is if the transguide signs were acccurate. What really bugs me about them, though, is when there's an amber alert, missing person, etc. and all the signs are flashing that info but NO traffic info. You'd think they could put the traffic info in the loop too.

There is a protocol for determining which messages to display. Amber alerts are near the top of the list, superceeded only if there is a major incident. In any case, there's never supposed to be more than two "flashes" of messages because that's all that can be read by a motorist traveling at 60 mph. Since Amber Alerts require two flashes to display all the relevent info, there's no room for another message.

As for accuracy, most of the time, TransGuide's signs are pretty good. But there are times when the messages do lag, usually because the operator monitoring the incident is busy with something else or there was an equipment malfunction and the signs didn't update properly.

Originally Posted by JCoyle

What about those message signs that say "Jones Maltsberger, 4-6 minutes." Does anyone pay attention to those?

Originally Posted by sapphire

Funny, but those seem to be fairly accurate. At least, in my experience.

The travel times are actually automatically generated and updated by the system using real-time data from the speed detectors along the freeways. But, as with anything that's automatic, the process does break-down from time-to-time. Also, they're based on rolling-averages, so the ephemeral nature of some traffic disturbances does render them dramatically inaccurate sometimes. It's really more of an art than a science.