Beat the Traffic Blog

Did you plan on driving for your Labor Day getaway? Beat the Traffic® may help you!

Plan your trip

Beat the Traffic® provides travel time/ peak times/ forecasts for major routes in cities such as Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta, Seattle, Phoenix, Denver, Raleigh, etc. with many more cities to come in the next few weeks.

Get alerted

Enter your own routes using your My Traffic account.
Set up your alerts so we can warn you of traffic jams along your way!

Check traffic on-the-go!

Wherever you can safely do so, check live traffic report on your mobile phone!
- Go to www.BeatTheTraffic.mobi using your mobile phone browser
- If you own a BlackBerry, you can download our BlackBerry App

More cities covered!

Check Beat the Traffic® if you plan a trip to Montreal, Houston, Ottawa, Milwaukee, Portland (Maine)… And still more cities to come!

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.

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.

The WSJ article can be found here.

As you are getting ready for holiday travel we wanted to share with you a brand new feature that may help you make smart decisions on when to travel and what route to take.

Introducing MyTraffic on your mobile device

Now there is one more reason to create a MyTraffic profile on Beat the Traffic.com: http://www.beatthetraffic.com/login.aspx

As you set up your familiar routes, including regional routes that you might take on your getaway or Holiday trip, you may now easily access those on your mobile device.

Just type the following address on your mobile web browser:

http://www.BeatTheTraffic.mobi 

and you will be redirected to the mobile menu below to the right. By selecting login to MyTraffic you will be prompted to enter your user name (email address you chose when entering your MyTraffic profile) and password.

You will then see all your routes listed on your mobile device screen together with the corresponding drive time as well as any potential delay.

If there is a specific incident (or incidents) along a route causing a delay by clicking on the route such incidents will be displayed.

Here is my own MyTraffic screen on my blackberry device, where I have at my fingertips the important routes for my own travels including my commute routes as well as some routes I plan on traveling this weekend. One of them is highlighted in red with 12 minutes of delay so I am better informed and can alleviate stress and plan on taking the Hamilton to Mission alternative that is looking significantly better.

Another thing I like to do is to save this MyTraffic personalized content as a bookmark on my mobile device, and turn on a useful feature which consists of auto-refreshing the page at regular intervals so it always displays fresh content when I need to. 

BeatTheTraffic.mobi also provides convenient, up-to-the minute maps of traffic conditions for your region at your fingertips. Here is for instance a map of the Atlanta area. It comes complete with colored roadways illustrating the speed of traffic (green for 45 mph average or faster, yellow for 25 to 45 mph, and red for 25 or less mph), traffic incidents as represented with yellow, orange and red diamonds depending upon the severity, and, in most areas, icons representing real-time traffic camera snapshots. These cameras may be selected by clicking or you may access a full menu list of cameras available for your region.

We would love to have your feedback on these new features, and would appreciate it greatly if you would write to us at

http://www.beatthetraffic.com/feedback.aspx

Everyone at Beat the Traffic(R) wishes you a happy Holiday!