Netherlands-based traffic information and navigation company TomTom has announced that its TomTom City portal, which provides live traffic and travel information, has now extended to 50 cities worldwide.
The TomTom City portal showcases the extensive range of traffic information available on a city-by-city basis, and provides a platform to connect traffic authorities, businesses and citizens to jointly manage sustainable and efficient mobility. The portal launched in April this year with 25 cities and has so far proved popular, with Istanbul getting the most visits overall. The addition of 25 further cities means that more than 30 million more people can now benefit from the service. As the number of connected vehicles on the road increases over the coming years with the emergence of semi- and highly-automated driving, TomTom City will offer new ways to manage city mobility. Drivers and professionals involved in traffic management can make smarter decisions to avoid delays on the road, and reduce congestion for everyone.
Accessible from any internet-enabled device, the key features in TomTom City are:
• Real-Time Traffic Status, which aims to give a quick view of the current traffic condition in the city. The status indicators show the current average speed observed in the city, compared with average speed when there is no congestion; a congestion barometer shows relative congestion compared to a free-flowing period; and a snapshot shows the number of road closures, construction areas and accidents currently in the city. In addition, Real-Time Traffic Status also shows the traffic incidents and the traffic flow (speed) on a map. All real-time traffic information is updated every minute.
• Delay Hotspots, which shows the top congestion bottlenecks recorded in the recent quarterly period. The information is presented as a summary for ‘All day’ and separately for morning and afternoon peak periods to reflect the periodical traffic conditions in cities. Summary information is presented on a map view and each hotspot can be selected individually to see road segment delay details.
• Road Event Reporter is a new web-based tool that will help road authorities and other professional operators to inform millions of road users in minutes about events that are affecting the road network and its traffic flows via the TomTom Traffic service. With a few clicks, a road authority can report road closures, road works, accidents, and other disruptions that are affecting traffic in their local area, now, as well as those planned in the future.
“It’s great to extend our City system to a further 25 cities, giving even more drivers and traffic managers essential insights into the real-time traffic situation,” said Ralf-Peter Schäfer, head of traffic at TomTom. “This is a further step in our mission to help reduce delays for all drivers and pave the way to smarter cities. Using data from over 450 million devices globally, we are creating services that will help cities and connected cars work together to optimize the road network for everyone.”
