GeoSmart Reveals Real Time Journey Times for AA Traffic Users
Thursday 7 April 2011, 4:26PM
By Luigi Cappel
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NZ Automobile Association (AA) subsidiary GeoSmart built and maintains the AA Maps and AA Roadwatch websites on behalf of the AA. Utilising the latest technology and strong relationships it has developed with councils, NZTA, road construction and maintenance companies and Fleet Management companies, it has built these sites and AA Traffic, enabling motorists to see accidents, slips and other incidents and more recently real time traffic congestion flow covering all State Highways and Major arterial roads throughout New Zealand.
In the last few days it has launched an exciting new addition to the AA Traffic pages which is called Journey Times. Journey Times monitors 130 busy commonly travelled routes throughout New Zealand on a web page. It displays the journey segment on a map and shows the travel time if the road was clear, the average travel time segment for this current time and day of the week. It also updates the current conditions for the selected segment in real time for the selected road segment every 3 minutes.
This free web page allows the user to select their view of journey routes by city or region by priority or alphabetically.
GeoSmart has been developing relationships with leading Traffic Consultants, Local Government, NZTA, Road Construction and Maintenance Companies and other organisations to develop the best possible service, enabling the AA to display helpful information to motorists. In addition GeoSmart has now collected 12 months of historical data covering all NZ State Highways and arterials that can be used by councils, road construction and maintenance companies and consultant assisting in future planning.
GeoSmart exhibited this technology at last week's IPENZ (Institute of Professional Engineers of NZ) conference in Auckland and Sales Manager Luigi Cappel said "Many industry leaders were very surprised at the progress we have made in the last year and are excited about the opportunity to access live and historic road data for a variety of projects. This information is invaluable in relation to monitoring current and historic road use, the impact of road works, accidents or incidents with the ability to see before, during and after information has not been possible before to this scale."
Luigi said "Traditional technologies still have their place when doing more in depth research on specific road segments, however they are very expensive and require resources and planning. Clients can come to us and ask for historic data on a road segment or area by day of week, time of day or volume data over a historic period. This can be particularly valuable in to relation accidents or incidents after the event. You can't very well set up road loop counters after the accident to see what happened before it."
The Journey Times web page has proven instantly popular with the public and AA Traffic Spokesperson Phil Allen said "The AA is committed to increasing the number of travel time routes across New Zealand. Motorists can suggest new routes by completing the feedback form on the website"
Phil went on to say that due to the quality of data delivered by GeoSmart, New Zealand has been the first country outside of Western Europe where car navigation leader TomTom has had the confidence to launch its new Go Live navigation product with HD (High Definition) Traffic. HD Traffic uses the live traffic flow data from GeoSmart to display live traffic flow on the navigation device, receiving it through an embedded SIM Card allowing it to receive information anywhere it can get a mobile signal.