April/May 2008

People who need to know real-world traffic speeds on specific sections of road, for instance for planning or scheduling applications, have some new options available thanks to two new developments involving ITIS road-speed data.

ITIS 'floating vehicle' data is collected from around 50,000 vehicles in regular service on Britain's roads. Hundreds of thousands or GPS-based readings are taken at all times of day and night, and are aggregated to produce reliable typical speeds on given segments of road.

MapMechanics, a long-standing partner of ITIS, processes and packages the raw ITIS data and links it to the road network, and has now enhanced the range of mapping that comes with it.

The new release of the company's GB Speeds and GB Speeds PLUS data, which are based on Navteq vector data, provides road speed data on maps with far more attribute features attached to it. It presents road speeds for three main parts of the day (peak, rush-hour and night time), as well as for two different types of vehicle type (large goods vehicles and cars and smaller goods vehicles).

In a separate development, traffic intelligence specialist Journey Dynamics has announced a deal with ITIS Holdings that is said to herald a new generation of traffic speed forecasting applications.

Under the agreement, Journey Dynamics is incorporating ITIS data into its traffic intelligence model in order to produce accurate traffic speed forecasting using complex analysis of historical traffic information. The partnership will allow Journey Dynamics to sell its traffic intelligence commercially.

ITIS also has the option to license Journey Dynamics' model to aid its own application development.

* Navteq map data has been enhanced to include legal speed limits on many roads. It is being rolled out for a variety of countries in addition to Britain - not just in Europe, but also in more distant places such as South Africa and United Arab Emirates.