The Highways Agency has signed an agreement to provide near-real time traffic information to the TomTom satellite navigation system.
The Highways Agency manages 4,300-miles of motorways and A roads. It collects data on traffic flows from monitoring equipment built into the road surface, its CCTV network and other sources. The information is collected and distributed from its National Traffic Control Centre in Birmingham.
At the moment, the data is displayed on the Highway Agency's own website and through other online channels controlled by Google Maps, the BBC and other sites. The Highways Agency also already provides traffic feeds to mobiles, iPhone smartphones and Twitter.
Roads minister Mike Penning said: “This agreement between the Highways Agency and TomTom is a good example of public and private sectors working together to assist road users and exploit today’s technology. We look forward to working with other partners in the future.”
The Agency is providing its traffic information to TomTom in the Datex II format, which it helped develop as a European standard specifically for road data information exchange.
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