gtraffic - great free traffic mashup Sunday, November 12, 2006
The family & I had to travel from our home in South West London to North West London to meet up with some good friends who are briefly over from Melbourne, Australia. For those not familiar with London traffic, what appears to be a simple 17 mile journey in actual fact took 1hr 20mins and that was having avoided all roadworks on route & having the aid of a GPS enabled TomTom car navigator [astounding how cheap GPS devices are now - got mine for £40 from ebuyer and it works a treat on a PDA in the compact flash slot without needing an external aerial.]
We had been pre-warned about traffic problems to avoid prior to setting off thanks to a great traffic news & google maps mashup on gtraffic. I'd been alerted to this on the BBC backstage blog but as I drive infrequently during the week, using the tube/train, I'd not had occasion to use it before.
Functionally it only covers the UK, in part limited by the traffic news sources it utilises including the BBC. Sadly, the service is also restricted in terms of commercialisation since the BBC precludes any commercial use being made of its output (unless sanctioned by BBC Worldwide which is its commercial arm).
Won't it be great when internet connectivity in the car is commonplace & mobile data tariffs are all reasonably priced "all you can eat" tariffs - then you can have these services on the fly.
posted by John Wilson @ 12:01 AM Permanent Link
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