Sat nav company makes
Highways Agency data available to road users ahead of summer holidays
The Highways
Agency has reached agreement with TomTom to feed up to date
traffic information from England’s motorways and major A roads
into its sat nav services for road users.
The Highways Agency, which manages the 4,300-mile strategic road
network, collects data on traffic flows from sophisticated
monitoring equipment built into the road surface, backed up by
CCTV and other sources.
This data, which is already provided to drivers through the
Agency’s own channels, will be fed to TomTom for its High
Definition Traffic Services and is expected to be particularly
beneficial to families heading off on holiday over the next few months.
Roads Minister Mike Penning says:
“Through our national traffic control centre, we source up to the
minute traffic data from the motorways and other major roads we
manage, and we want to get that information out to road users
where and when they need it most.
“This agreement between the Highways Agency and TomTom is a good
example of public and private sectors working together to assist
road users and exploit today’s technology.
”We work with third party organisations to get our information to
as wide an audience as possible. We have also shared our
information with GoogleMaps™ and the BBC who provide our traffic
camera images so road users can check on the internet before they
leave. We look forward to working with other partners in the future.”
The Highways Agency is an established traffic information
provider, with its own live traffic updates fed through on
platforms such as its own and third party websites, as well as
feeding data to mobiles, iPhone, digital information screens and Twitter.
The Highways Agency provides its traffic information to TomTom™
in a Datex II format, which it helped develop as a European
standard specifically for road data information exchange. The
Agency data provides real-time traffic information and predictions
based on past conditions, helping road users to plan their
journeys to avoid congestion.
The data, provided by the Agency’s National Traffic Control
Centre in Birmingham, is also used to populate the Highways
Agency’s own website www.highways.gov.uk/traffic.
Using this site, drivers can see current and predicted driving
conditions, view what is currently being displayed on electronic
motorway signs and even tell the average traffic speed between any
two junctions on the motorway network.
Notes to Editors
1. The Highways Agency is an executive agency of the Department
for Transport. We manage, maintain and improve England’s motorways
and other strategic roads on behalf of the Secretary of State.
2. For more information about TomTom please contact Rosie
Tickner, PR Manager, on 020 7529 8419 or rosie.tickner@tomtom.com.
3. Real-time traffic information for England’s motorways and
other strategic roads is available:
- From the web at www.highways.gov.uk/traffic
or www.highways.gov.uk/mobile
if using a phone or mobile device.
- By phone from the
Highways Agency Information Line on 0300 123 5000 at any time.
(Calls to 0300 numbers will cost no more than 5p per minute from a
standard BT residential landline. Call charges from other
landlines and mobile networks may vary, but will be no more than a
standard geographic call and will be included in all inclusive
minutes and discount schemes).
- Before using any mobile, find
a safe place to park. Never stop on the hard shoulder of a
motorway except in an emergency. Make sure it’s safe and legal
before you call.
- From our Traffic Radio service, available
on DAB digital radio and the internet at www.trafficradio.org.uk
To tune into the DAB service, simply press the
"scan" button on your radio. The radio will tune
into all available channels and you can select the new service by
scrolling through the channels until you reach "Traffic
Radio".
- From Twitter on one of eight separate feeds
with live traffic information for each region - for the full index
visit www.highways.gov.uk/twitter
4. Receive our national and regional press releases by RSS and
get the latest headlines straight to your desktop the moment we
publish them to our website. Choose to receive a national press
feed or one of our regionalised feeds - go to www.highways.gov.uk/rssnews
for more information.
Contacts:
Mik Barton.
Phone: 075 5445 8909
mik.barton@highways.gsi.gov.uk