(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.

“With this new technology, our users are able to view traffic flow, speeds, incidents and travel times on major roadways throughout the region, while benefiting from the instant point to point trip times on our home page as well as the On-Time Traffic page” says WRAL.com’s Creative Services Director John Conway. “We chose Beat the Traffic® because we wanted to provide a more useful and personalized traffic report, as well as a more tailored and timely traffic alerts service.”

Beat the Traffic® is powered by INRIX, using their GPS enabled vehicle data to provide the most accurate traffic information. Beat the Traffic® grew its affiliates 50% in the past 12 months despite the most difficult economic conditions since the 1930s. Its highly innovative technology is protected by U.S. Patents Nos. 7,375,649, 7,221,287, 7,508,321, 6,989,765, and 7,161,487 and 5 additional patents pending.

“We’re very pleased to partner with WRAL.com to bring our traffic reporting system to the Triangle area,” says Andre Gueziec, President & CEO of Triangle Software, the operators of the Beat the Traffic®. “Our award winning solution also features a travel time forecast component that is able to predict peaks of traffic for a specific route and best and worst times to leave in the next 7 days.”

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