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Yahoo! Maps to Support Realtime Traffic

Posted by michael on Sat Dec 18, 2004 11:30 PM
from the you-could-also-just-look-out-the-car-window dept.
The Internet
squidfrog writes "Yahoo is set to support realtime traffic overlays for its existing Yahoo! Maps program. 'Yahoo's dynamic maps draw on real-time traffic information from metropolitan transportation departments and private providers, including embedded road sensors, traffic cameras, police scanners, and traffic helicopters. Yahoo declined to identify the exact sources of its traffic data... Roadways are colored green, yellow and red, to highlight the normal movement of traffic, minor delays or severe road congestion. A user can hover over a stretch of road to view details of impediments.'"
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  • Great... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Icarus1919 (802533) on Saturday December 18 2004, @11:33PM (#11128175)
    Fantastic, now we have to deal with people stopping to gawk at accidents on the road AND on the internet. JUST DRIVE BY IT! DON'T LOOK! What's wrong with you people!?
      • So it would be more humane to ignore an accident and drive by it like nothing happened? People have been seriously injured and even possibly killed and the most you can say about it is that you are annoyed it adds five minutes to your commute? Inhumane indeed.

        Not to support the rubber neckers or nothin'.
        • Actually I seem to remember reading that the number one cause of accidents is people gawking at other accidents. What they need is some kind of temporary wall that can be erected quickly to hide the accident, possibly in addition to glaring spotlights to keep people from staring at it like sheep as they drive by. Either that or maybe put pictures of the goatse guy or tubgirl around the accident so people avert their eyes quickly.

          • Re:Great... (Score:5, Funny)

            by timeOday (582209) on Sunday December 19 2004, @12:36AM (#11128386)
            Actually I seem to remember reading that the number one cause of accidents is people gawking at other accidents.
            Oh yeah, right up there with all the other #1 causes of accidents such as aggressive driving, speeding, DUI, and talking on cellphones, which together account for 457% of all accidents on US roadways.

            • Re:Great... (Score:3, Informative)

              by nizo (81281) *
              Ahh here is the study I was thinking of:

              here is the full story [washingtonpost.com]

              And here is the first bit of the article:

              A new study of traffic accidents conducted on Virginia roads has found, unsurprisingly, that many car crashes are the result of driver distraction. But while cell phones are increasingly fingered as dangerous in-car distractions, the study, conducted by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), found that old-fashioned rubbernecking was the biggest singl

            • The real problem is stupid people. They're everywhere. And ... they don't know they're stupid.
  • The local radio can't even get the traffic patterns right, what makes Yahoo! think they can do better?
    • >local radio

      It's a start, but it will take them a while to get it debugged.

      Yahoo and other services do a good job with sporting events, taking the AP, NFL/MLB/NBA and other feeds and using Java apps to turn that into dynamic box scores.

      This will be no different.

      One thing is that it could prove hugely profitable for Yahoo. According to CNNMoney, they plan to make it available for free, to distinguish themselves from Google. They may offer it as a premium service aimed at portable devices, but I thin
    • In California, many of the highways are already "wired" - they can in fact tell you in real time how traffic is flowing in certain areas, and this info is available to the public.

  • Seattle has had something like this for ages (Score:5, Interesting)

    by breser (16790) on Saturday December 18 2004, @11:35PM (#11128179) Homepage
    http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/traffic/seattle/ [wa.gov]

    and you can even get it on mobile devices:
    http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/traffic/seattle/products/ [wa.gov]

  • Damn (Score:3, Funny)

    by chrisgeleven (514645) on Saturday December 18 2004, @11:36PM (#11128185) Homepage
    Apparently my area is not available yet...and I live in the biggest city in NH.

    • Re:Damn (Score:5, Funny)

      by mordors9 (665662) on Saturday December 18 2004, @11:38PM (#11128192)
      Man, not the largest ciy in NH...... I can't believe they missed that one ;-)
    • That's funny. The whole state of NH has less population than.. what, the top 50 major cities in North America? The biggest city in NH is, like... Manchester, population 100,000.

      Dude. Orange County, CA... just one suburb of Los Angeles, has over twice the population of your whole freaking state. Get some perspective.

      • Re:Damn (Score:5, Funny)

        by jpmkm (160526) on Saturday December 18 2004, @11:50PM (#11128247) Homepage
        The Taco Bell down the road from me is utterly useless to the 99% of the world's population who doesn't live in my city. They might as well close down since there are so many people who can't use it. How dare they provide a service for some people without taking the entire planet's population into consideration? Those arrogant pricks!

        • Re:Damn (Score:5, Funny)

          by 93 Escort Wagon (326346) on Sunday December 19 2004, @12:26AM (#11128369)
          "The Taco Bell down the road from me is utterly useless to the 99% of the world's population who doesn't live in my city."

          1% of the world's population lives in your city? Why on earth would there be a Taco Bell in Mexico City?
      • I would bet that in Japan you can already get something like this data. Austraila is much the same as NH. Just not that big of a population. If you think that it could work in your local Yahoo not doing it means that you can. So step up and start a company.

  • Just like Simcity 2! (Score:5, Funny)

    by OccidentalSlashy (809265) on Saturday December 18 2004, @11:40PM (#11128200)
    I hope they tie into emergency services too and show lazily rendered orange flames coming from the windows of any burning buildings.

    Come to think about it, how about a Average Income Overlay while we're at it so I know where to look for cheap girls. Er, for cheap monitors.

  • declined because...? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SuperBanana (662181) on Saturday December 18 2004, @11:41PM (#11128204)
    Yahoo declined to identify the exact sources of its traffic data

    I'm going to bet it's because some company is getting data from all the sensors and "traffic center" infrastructure we paid for.

    I seriously doubt they have to pay anything for it aside from maybe the cost of a leased line...and I doubt Yahoo gets it for free from said company. Someone's making a lot of bucks off equipment and staff we pay for...even assuming costs for processing the data.

    Interestingly, I was just driving down Route 3 here in MA, and noticed that they finally had finished most of the construction for widening the road. Also installed- cameras. The tilt-pan-zoom kind. About every mile or so. In between, or sometimes on the same pole, some sort of antenna box pointed at the road, probably to sense how fast cars are moving by.

    Someone want to explain to me how a camera reduces traffic? Considering they have no dynamic ways to alter traffic patterns, seems like a royal fucking waste of money and something bound to be abused.

    • Hmmm... A camera... and a radar detector on the roads you say? Maybe its to clock and photograph speeders.
    • Actually, when you view the map, it displays exactly where its getting its information from. Whether it pays for it or not is still to be determined.

      In regards to traffic cameras being a waste of money, perhaps. But even if they do not currently have any ways to reduce traffic, a simple easy way of knowing where traffic is bad and being able to redirect accordingly should be of some help. Additionally, when the technology is developed to dynamically, intellegently alter traffic patterns, then the infras
    • I don't know if this is one of their sources, but Oakland County, Michigan has had this online for years.

      Traffic and construction maps [rcocweb.org]
    • Someone want to explain to me how a camera reduces traffic? Considering they have no dynamic ways to alter traffic patterns, seems like a royal fucking waste of money and something bound to be abused.

      Obviously cameras don't reduce the gross flow of traffic, but they might help ensure that the traffic keeps flowing as smoothly as possible - for instance dispatching police, tow trucks, or other emergency crews where necessary. It can also be used for road condition analysis for display on information boards
    • CALTRANS has both cameras and sensor loops in the road, for most freeways in the SF and LA areas. When the sensor loops detect a discontinuity in traffic flow (usually a slow area with high vehicle density followed by a fast area with low vehicle density) they connect to the appropriate camera and take a look.

      You need both. Without sensor loops, there's too much camera data for anybody to watch, and without cameras, the control center can't see what the problem is. They can usually tell if an inciden

    • The wonderul privacy country where I come from (the UK, AKA "CCTV Capital of the World") have multiple cameras on roads, mainly motorways and A-(main)Roads. They're mainly used to monitor traffic remotely, and reduce the need for police patrols. They don't directly reduce the traffic, but the information they provide is used on radio reports etc. A side effect of the proliferation of cameras has been the availability to the public - you can access nearly all of the cameras via the BBC websites - London alo
  • Maybe Yahoo! should fix their mapping software first. Whenever I use them to find out how to get from point A to point B, they always seem to give me directions with a longer route rather than the shortest one. Same thing with Mapquest.

  • "SimCopter One Reporting Heavy Traffic" (Score:4, Funny)

    by dcollins (135727) on Saturday December 18 2004, @11:42PM (#11128216) Homepage
    TRAFFIC WARNING -
    Traffic in this city is expanding.
    The commuters are getting militant.
    Highway shootings are on the rise.
    Either build more roads and rails or get a bulletproof limo.
  • Looking at the country map [yahoo.com], it seems that this only covers the larger metropolitan areas, so far.

    So don't get too excited if you happen to be from a place like Mianus, Connecticut [yahoo.com].

  • Why not show public transportation routes? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RyanMuldoon (69574) on Saturday December 18 2004, @11:44PM (#11128221) Homepage
    Instead of just showing road traffic and only offering driving directions, Yahoo could make using public transportation easier by offering directions using buses, subways, and commuter rails as an option. It would allow people to use public transportation without having to spend a lot of time figuring out all the different bus routes and schedules. Maybe it would reduce the traffic a bit.

  • Could it get any longer? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 18 2004, @11:44PM (#11128226)
    Wonderfully readable URLs these people use:

    http://maps.yahoo.com/maps_result?csz=Pittsburgh %2 C+PA+15217-3040&state=PA&uzip=15217&ds=n&name=&des c=&ed=T0qRZep_0Tr4Np7V.TbRpftsXKUsg.181R_6HssRgbH4 .yRRzOjaX0DeuaWWJS56AXckQ40QmpAModdDHtclDakA.aSV.z FfQG0V3OHy5Mk_pwdSUUJlFw--&zoomin=yes&BFKey=&mag=2 &resize=s&cat=trav&trf=1#mapcontent

    • Re:Could it get any longer? (Score:4, Funny)

      by prockcore (543967) on Sunday December 19 2004, @05:18AM (#11129035)
      http://maps.yahoo.com/maps_result?csz=Pittsburgh%2 C+PA+15217-3040&state=PA&uzip=15217&ds=n&name=&des c=&ed=T0qRZep_0Tr4Np7V.TbRpftsXKUsg.181R_6HssRgbH4 .yRRzOjaX0DeuaWWJS56AXckQ40QmpAModdDHtclDakA.aSV.z FfQG0V3OHy5Mk_pwdSUUJlFw--&zoomin=yes&BFKey=&mag=2 &resize=s&cat=trav&trf=1#mapcontent

      Hey, that looks just like some of the posts on the old BBS's I used to frequent. It just needs ++ATH0 NO CARRIER at the end to make it complete.
  • I would imagine that this service is already available elsewhere. Googling "traffic conditions" with various city names usually turns up decent results.

    Many major metropolitan areas have government agencies devoted to controlling traffic; their websites might also be a good place to look.

  • one possible source for data (Score:5, Informative)

    by Fratz (630746) on Saturday December 18 2004, @11:56PM (#11128269)
    Traffic.com [traffic.com] also posts realtime traffic flow information, and they say they get their data from these sources [traffic.com].

  • What I really want... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Fratz (630746) on Sunday December 19 2004, @12:04AM (#11128294)
    is to make use of historical traffic flow data to plan out a route based on start time. This is mostly only valuable for out-of-town travelers, but I'm sure everyone's had one of those experiences where they figured 3:00PM was early enough to be driving near, say, NYC, to avoid rush hour.

    I want my navigation system to adjust to unforeseen (realtime) traffic data and re-route me when appropriate, but the most important thing is for it to calculate an effective top speed for each potential road along the path, based on their historical flow data on various days of the week, holidays, and at various times of day. That way, it may realize that a 35MPH side-road that parallels the highway is actually faster than the 65MPH highway at 4:00PM on days when there's some sporting event going on. Prevents me from having to know this stuff :)

    Yes, I still want to actually drive the car, thank you very much :)

  • About time. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by evilviper (135110) on Sunday December 19 2004, @12:05AM (#11128298) Journal
    I have a hard time believing how slowly online maps are progressing.

    I don't care about traffic info, I can get that myself, elsewhere, but online maps don't even ALLOW you to request an alternate route. You have time and distance to choose from, and that's all.

    While I'm complaining, let's talk about the weather channel's web-site. They show you the weather over the major freeways in the country, but it is horrendous at predicting anything. It simply takes today's weather, and assumes everything will be less severe every day after... It's perfectly consistent in this behavior, even when their own forecast know, a week in advance, that the weather is actually going to get worse.

    And radio stations are no better. All the "highway stations" tell you a little bit about traffic if you tune-in at the right time, but never anything about bad weather. I was driving directly into the path of a 300mile blizzard, and I didn't have a clue. Even after there was a massive accident that completely blocked the freeway, none of the new media reported (or knew) about it until the next day.

    It seems like everything we have in-place is completely impotent. It's even that forecasts are bad, it's that all the information that is well-known is kept isolated, and only provided to the people that need to know about it the MOST, after everything is over.

    These are all VERY, VERY simple and easy things, yet nobody has bothered to do it. I think this is clearly an indication of what happens when media outlets are consolidated, reduced to doing nothing but imitating the competition, etc.
  • I have taken the source of the traffic images from my local transportation website and hosted them on a page so I don't have to click on each section of the map. Saves me a lot of time. I know many people do this. Feel free to use this webpage I have setup if you take the Don Valley Parkway, Gardiner, and QEW. Also the traffic flow map located at the top of that website is handy.

    http://3dnewsnet.com/drive.htm [3dnewsnet.com]

  • TMC in Europe... nice if this could be here... (Score:5, Informative)

    by cytoman (792326) on Sunday December 19 2004, @12:13AM (#11128322)
    Apparently, in Europe, there is something called TMC which is a standard for all of Europe. The GPS software there can make use of this to give you additional information on traffic. Below is an excerpt of a review on OnCourse Navigator from http://www.pocketgpsworld.com:

    TMC

    Traffic Message Channel is a pretty successful system in some European countries that transmits current traffic conditions via the RDS (radio data system) components of standard FM radio station broadcasting. Provided with a special GPS receiver (which basically includes a FM radio) users in Europe can let Navigon adjust it's routing decisions based on the incoming TMC messages. In the US the picture is very different. Every metropole has its own traffic messaging system, they are all incompatible, and most of them are not free services anyhow. As a result the OnCourse Navigator program has left out the TMC functionality. If you come over from Europe and use your MN|4 with the maps of OnCourse Navigator then keep in mind that TMC is of no use here.

  • First they need to get the maps right!! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by the_rajah (749499) * on Sunday December 19 2004, @12:20AM (#11128348) Homepage
    Mapquest is worse than Yahoo, but they both are years out of date for the roads in my neighborhood and both are useless in giving directions to our house. A railroad that was taken out some ten years ago and converted to a bike path is still on Mapquest. Both maps show a road that has been closed and don't have a new road that replaces it hundreds of yards away.

    Last year I was scanning Popular Science and saw an ad for a Garmin GPS with a street map on the color display. Lo and behold, it was centered on my house, but it was screwed up as I related above. We wrote to them and told them that if they really used that map, people would be getting lost in my area if they used their unit since that road isn't there any more and, oh, about that railroad.. They replied that they'd be in contact with their map source (Looks like Mapquest) and would be sure to get it corrected... Over a year later, it's still inaccurate.

    I can understand that it's a huge task to keep things like that updated, but when you get information handed to you about inaccurace, you'd think it'd get fixed within a few months.

    "Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
    • gps companies like gtk [gdtcanada.com] and teleatlas [teleatlas.com] and many others all have giant workcenters for data pluggers -- they just sit there with lists of nodes to verify. they have to use multiple souces to update an error. it's no surprise with the amount of red tape involved with getting a correction done that the updates are delayed.

  • My list of traffic maps list for L.A.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by antdude (79039) on Sunday December 19 2004, @12:44AM (#11128414) Homepage Journal
    Note: Some of these URLs are other cities too.

    TANN [tann.net]
    Sigalert.com [sigalert.com]
    Metrocommute [metrocommute.com]
    MSN Autos [msn.com]
    CHP Traffic Incident Info. [ca.gov]
    Caltrans Realtime Freeway Speed Map (Java) [ca.gov]

    Any more I missed for Los Angeles area? :)

  • This is VERY cool (Score:3, Interesting)

    by EvilStein (414640) <spam@[ ].net ['pbp' in gap]> on Sunday December 19 2004, @01:02AM (#11128478) Homepage
    I noticed this a few days ago and it's been GREAT so far.

    Uh, it doesn't suggest alternate routes, though. So I see "Hmm, Hwy 880 is, as usual, fucked." but can find no way around it.

    On the bright side, the "Show local Starbucks" works.. I can sit around and wait out the traffic. :)

  • Something Awful (Score:3, Funny)

    by Fancia (710007) on Sunday December 19 2004, @01:09AM (#11128504)
    This is nice, but the good people over at Something Awful [somethingawful.com] beat them to it four years ago!

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