(Raleigh, NC and Santa Clara, CA, June 25, 2009) WRAL.com launches on-line, personalized traffic reports to assist harried commuters of the Raleigh-Durham Triangle area.
WRAL just introduced WRAL.com users to Beat the Traffic®, the nation’s fast-growing traffic information platform that will help Raleigh, Durham and Fayetteville drivers ease their commutes. The Triangle metropolitan area has significant traffic congestion issues according to a recent study by the Texas Transportation Institute. The study reports that commuters in Raleigh Durham waste an average of 35 hours per year to congestion-induced traffic delays. This represents an entire work-or leisure-week wasted every single year!
WRAL.com is working to help commuters by offering high-value, innovative traffic reporting using leading-edge technology from Beat the Traffic®. WRAL.com will be the first in the market to feature such innovations as travel time forecasts, and a point to point trip time widget. The timing of the new service coincides with a busy travel period of the 4th of July holiday. Motorists will be able to check the WRAL.com traffic section to avoid accident and construction delays as they head to the beach or mountains.
Beat the Traffic® provides one-screen access to complete information including traffic speeds, incidents, camera snapshots and weather information on WRAL.com/traffic. A new trip-time widget rotates point to point travel times for the Triangle’s key commute routes. The trip time widget is also available on WRAL.com’s home page during peak hours.
Perhaps the most innovative part is the new My Routes personalization feature. WRAL.com visitors can personalize their traffic information by saving their routes on WRAL.com, being informed of instant trip times on their personalized routes and receiving SMS/text alerts on their cell phones or email when delays or incidents occur. Powered by INRIX data, the system’s live traffic coverage has been expanded to cover a large number of routes in the Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville area.
..says the narrator of a wonderful Discovery Channel documentary on “Gridlock” that just aired in Canada.
Speaking of personal cars and trucks, the narrator goes further to say: “They’ve taken over the world. Put them end to end and they would circle the globe one hundred times. We created them, we fell in love with them and now we’ve run out of ideas on how to get rid of them”.
The documentary provides a truly international perspective on the traffic congestion that is sprawling through out the world. It shares the experience of commuters in Vancouver and Toronto, of an airborne traffic reporter and a trucking company in Vancouver.
This is followed by an interview of a Faculty Professor in Great Britain specializing in transportation studies. “Gridlock” also evokes the traffic congestion situation in big cities of India and China.
”Innovators see an opportunity. Crunch data from cell phone signals, GPS, road sensors and traffic centers, you can create live graphics for the local TV news. The innovation comes from California where Gridlock is an epidemic. Andre Gueziec [our CEO] things he can help fix it.”
Andre then gives a short interview and demonstration of our BeatTheTraffic-3D system that is used by 30 TV/Cable channels in the USA and Canada. “It’s visual, accurate and can help drivers beat gridlock by avoiding the hotspots as they appear.”
Below is a short excerpt of the Beat the Traffic interview:
KLAS Las Vegas Channel 8’s Dayna Roselli is using Beat the Traffic® for her traffic reports. In a segment of the documentary, Dayna reports on HOV sign and rule changes.
We hear that this stunning piece of journalism will soon be airing in other countries, so stay tuned…
We’ve added great new features for your mobile phone. Check out the brand new version of our WAP site:
Now you can zoom in and out to get a better view of the location you want. Easily change maps views using the navigation buttons.
Cameras images and maps load faster, as image sizes are specifically adapted to your mobile device.
You may access our new WAP website from any web-enabled mobile phone.
Give it a try !
If you already surfed on our mobile site, you will see these changes next time you connect your device to www.BeatTheTraffic.mobi.
Otherwise, try it now! Type www.BeatTheTraffic.mobi on your mobile web browser and you will be redirected to the mobile menu of Beat the Traffic® .
By selecting a city, you will be able to access the map you want, travel times for the most common routes, a listing of relevant incidents, as well as live camera snapshots in selected markets.
Do you want Beat the Traffic® to remember your personal routes?
From your PC, create your personal routes. Then, you will have one click access to instant travel times on your personalized routes. Just login to MyTraffic from your mobile phone or PC.
You may also create alerts, so that Beat the Traffic® will send you a text message to alert you of incidents and delays.
(Buffalo, New York May 27, 2009) Time Warner Cable’s newly launched Your News Now Buffalo unveiled its new and highly innovative traffic reporting system.
YNN Buffalo serves over 300,000 cable subscribers in Western New York 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. YNN can be seen on Channel 14 in downtown Buffalo, and on Channel 9 in the surrounding suburbs.
“We provide a unique service to the second largest city in New York,” said Jim Aroune, YNN Buffalo Executive Editor. “Along with our around the clock coverage of Western New York news, government, weather and sports, we’re now the first to offer Beat The Traffic’s valuable real-time traffic data, highway speeds and road incidents on-air, on-line and on-mobile. People will find this to be a most striking, user-friendly experience on every platform.”
“We also chose Beat The Traffic® for R NEWS in Rochester, New York,” said Steve Paulus, TWC Regional Vice President. “Time Warner has a strong presence and is willing to invest in its upstate News York round-the-clock news channels which are a key factor in servicing our subscribers.”
“We’re very pleased to partner with Time Warner Cable allowing us to bring our traffic reporting system to both Buffalo and Rochester,” says Andre Gueziec, President & CEO of Triangle Software, the operators of the Beat the Traffic®. “To save travelers time and money, our award winning solution also features co-branded mobile web pages, for Rochester as well as for Buffalo traffic conditions.”
After listening to all your feedback, we just launched an upgraded version of BeatTheTraffic.com:
A more attractive website. We changed the design of BeatTheTraffic.com and updated our logo. We hope that you like the new design and new map icons.
More cities covered: New Orleans (LA), Oklahoma City (OK) , and Albuquerque (NM) are just some of many new cities we started road traffic coverage on. And soon several additional cities in the USA and Canada will come on-line too!. Take a look at the complete list while planning your next trip!
More information about Beat the Traffic® on television. We provide great traffic reporting solutions to TV channels. So, check out our “BTT on TV” section listing the news channels using Beat the Traffic® technology.
Take a tour page. For a refresher of all the features that Beat the Traffic® can offer, we have created a new “Take a tour “ page.
Thank you for using Beat the Traffic® and do not hesitate to contact us for feedback or any question you might have.
Beat the Traffic® attended to the NAB 2009 show last April. Just back from that huge event, we wrote on the present blog that our Wiimote remote control integration with the on-air Beat the Traffic®3D presentation was particularly appreciated. We were not mistaken!
For a quick reminder, Nintendo’s Wiimote remote control can now be used to navigate our real-time 3D traffic maps. The Wiimote uses Bluetooth, so navigation can be controlled up to about 30 feet away. You can simply twist the control to move the display up and down or from left to right.
B&C loves this new feature too. In his article, entitled “NAB 2009: Beat the Traffic Embraces Bluetooth” written in April 23, Glen Dickson discusses Beat the Traffic®’s use of the Wiimote. He highlights that “a traffic reporter can perform a fly-through over a market area, smoothly zoom into the site of an incident, and then click the Wiimote to call up more detailed information or display live video from a traffic camera.” This new tool is really useful for the 30 TV channels that are already experiencing the Beat the Traffic® solution. Moreover, the article reveals that “the product is receiving strong interest from local cable news operations as well”.
What do you think about that new feature?
Get the latest news about Beat the Traffic® visiting the news and press section of our corporate website.
At Beat the Traffic® we are wrapping up a very busy week at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show in Las Vegas.
Our booth experienced a relentless flow of visitors and the innovations introduced were very well received. The Wiimote remote control integration with the on-air BeatTheTraffic-3D presentation was particularly appreciated. Broadcasting and Cable Senior Editor Glenn Dickson interviewed our CEO on the show floor about this new feature and its potential to revolutionize the presentation of information on live television and other broadcast and cable media.
Traffic and Weather reports are generally pre-produced a few minutes (or more) ahead of time by the TV reporter. When on the set, the reporter typically advances a series of pre-programmed views, slides, and transitions.
Our new integration of the bluetooth Wiimote remote control allows reporters to depart from the pre-sets and zoom in and out and explore additional locations or detail to reveal late-braking incidents, the updated extent of a back-up and other real-time information that was not fully prepared before the show.
This allows for a more personal and informative segment, presented in an entertaining fashion.
Beat the Traffic® also introduced the capability to play live video streams inside the 3D application. These can be Department of Transportation cameras such as the Caltrans cameras in Los Angeles or San Francisco.
This new capability was demonstrated “in beta” and will soon be released for on-air production use.
Beat the Traffic(R) is exhibiting in April at the National Association of Broadcasters show in the Las Vegas Convention Center, from Monday April 20 through April 23.
In his Wall Street Journal article entitled “On the Road” of February 16, 2009, Roger Cheng describes various options that are available to a traveler to check road traffic conditions using his or her cell phone.
Cheng reviews a number of websites and services providing maps of cities including traffic conditions. In his “Take a Look” section, Cheng suggests to try Beat the Traffic.mobi “to get a better feel for a city than a map can offer”.
He goes on to say: “Beat the Traffic offers real-time video of major intersections and highways gleaned off of feeds from local traffic cameras. You can set up what roads and routes you want to go on ahead of time on your PC, and check the images and traffic updates on your cellphone later. Another feature allows you to calculate how long it will take to get to a certain point, factoring in traffic. Traffic-jam alerts can be sent to your phone. You can access the site on your phone at BeatTheTraffic.mobi.”
“In addition to 75 cities in the U.S., the site covers Toronto.”
One very interesting free download Cheng mentions as well is called “Prompt” and is available from Proxpro.com. Prompt lets you tie appointment locations in your calendar to traffic conditions for an optimal on-time arrival.
(Raleigh, NC and Santa Clara, CA, June 25, 2009) WRAL.com launches on-line, personalized traffic reports to assist harried commuters of the Raleigh-Durham Triangle area.
B&C loves this new feature too. In his article, entitled “
