Ralf-Peter Schäfer - Aug 30, 2011 4:41 AM

Welcome to my blog about TomTom HD Traffic. I am ready to answer questions what you would ever wanted to know about our traffic service. Feel free to raise questions. Thanks.

Ines - Aug 30, 2011 4:46 AM

Do these 80 million mobile phone users know that their way on the road is tracked?

Ralf-Peter Schäfer - Aug 30, 2011 4:58 AM

In 8 countries in Europe TomTom is using GSM based probe information from cell phone users on a fully anonymous basis as on single source for HD Traffic. The users cannot be tracked by TomTom. What TomTom does receive out of the telecommunication operator network are aggregated speed information when the cell phone is traversing road stretches while calling. The TomTom probe system is using Timing Advance Measurement reports which give rough positioning information about a GSM antenna sector currently served for the call. The agreement to use the data is part of the operator terms and outside TomTom's control. Privacy is fully respected and in Germamy, for instant, review by the Ministry of Consumer Protection before the service went live in 2008.

Michael Link - Aug 30, 2011 5:18 AM

Which km-horizon does a TomTom device use for the calculation of a route? Example: Driving from Cologne to Kiel, sometimes it is better to react very early with taking a completely different (and far away) route (using A1-A2-A7) instead of just using a nearby road to keep clear from a traffic jam on the A1 between Bremen and Hamburg (would mean: Using a crowded B75). I mean, sometimes you have to make a kind of strategic decision very early ;-) Is it possible with HD-Traffic?

Ralf-Peter Schäfer - Aug 30, 2011 5:35 AM

The traffic horizon is currently set to 120 km ahead of your current position. So far the bounding box is 240x240 km where the traffic messages are considered and vissible for the user (map view). TomTom has decided to further increase the horizon to 160km on short notice. This will bring the users more benefits when strategic routing decision have to be considered.

Ines - Aug 30, 2011 5:21 AM

So did I get you right, that HD Traffic works in 8 European countries? What about the rest of Europe?

Ralf-Peter Schäfer - Aug 30, 2011 5:27 AM

HD Traffic is live in 21 countries where we use in 8 European countries the GSM probe system. As a user you can travel seamless from Poland to Portugal and from the Norway to Italy using HD Traffic without roaming costs. Apart from the European systems the service is up in South Africa, the US, Australia and New Zealand. The full coverage can freely accessed via our web page routes.tomtom.com.

Martina Schmidt - Aug 30, 2011 5:24 AM

Do you have studies or figures about cost savings for fleets, by using HD traffic?

Ralf-Peter Schäfer - Aug 30, 2011 5:41 AM

Martina: right now we do not have extensive figures about cost savings using HD Traffic. Howewer some external journal made studies to compare travel time and fuel savings using HD Traffic in combination with our IQ Routes Technology in Gremany e.g. Stiftung Warentest, Connect. Travel time saving can be significant up to 15% on idividual basis and in the big urban areas you can already benefit from rerouting around traffic when using HD Traffic enabled TomTom devices.

Moritz Jaeger - Aug 30, 2011 5:38 AM

How precise is the data from the GSM devices? Can you, for example, distinguish, if there is a traffic jam on a Highway or street, that is going parallel to to the Highway?

Ralf-Peter Schäfer - Aug 30, 2011 5:52 AM

Moritz: the precision of the TomTom GSM probe technology is leading in the world and reaches positioning between 100 and 500 metres accuracy. Our method using the Timing Advance measurements reports instead cell ID change tracking in other technolgies and is far more precise and reliable. Another advantage is that each GSM antenna on a GSM Tower usually cover a sector of 120 degrees. the separation between highways and parallel roads can be done so far more easier as in Cell ID based probe systems. For any jam message creation and also for very complex road networks as you described the TomTom HD Traffic system can use its GPS probes as well (accuracy 6-10 metres) to guarantee the computation of precise speed information and related jam messages. Currently for the highways we always have both probe data feeds available (GPS and GSM based). Right now more than 1 million probe vehicles contributing to HD Traffic and help to solve this issue you described.

Alexander Bohnsack - Aug 30, 2011 5:54 AM

You say, the position of a mobile phone is being tracked during a call. do you mean a phone-call or do you mean the connection to the gsm antenna in a cell/sector for the trackingprocedure?

Ralf-Peter Schäfer - Aug 30, 2011 6:15 AM

Alexander: the rough position (Timing Advance Sector) of a cell phone is known by the GSM operator network to synchronize the call. The distance measure roughly describes the Timing Advance value and the area of current location depends how far the cell phone is away from the base station. e.g. timing advance value is 1 means the distance is roughly up to 500 meters, 2 between 500 and 1000 meters. the anntenna sector (usually 120 degree viewing angle) describes the whole shape of the area where the cell phone can be at the moment. the Timing advance value is measured 2 times a second and any change can be used to map match the timing advance zones to the underlying road network as a rough location information. The caller itself is not known by Tomtom and never tracked. We only receive map matched speed information out of the operatot network.

Clemens Velten - Aug 30, 2011 6:07 AM

What is the difference between TMCPro (NAVTEQ Traffic), INRIX and HD Traffic?

Ralf-Peter Schäfer - Aug 30, 2011 6:24 AM

Clemens: HD Traffic has a number of advantages compared to competing services. Hd Traffic has the highest coverage with probe data and is delivered in the entire major road network. This is unique and far more than any competing TMC based service can offer. The number of jam messages is significantly higher as any other service and can be monitored via routes.tomtom.com or experiences on any connected TomTom device. Further HD Traffic updates every 30 seconds on the server side and every 2 minutes on the client side (PND, in-dash, iphone). The quality is leading. In Germany a TÜV benchmark with all major service supplier where made in the Ruhr area where HD Traffic was rated to be 50% more precise as any competitor.

Darren Griffin - Aug 30, 2011 7:02 AM

Are there any plans to increase the look-ahead horizon for traffic incidents? In earlier devices this was much greater and it has attracted much criticism in the UK where it does not look far enough ahead to allow the best route to be chosen in all cases.

Ralf-Peter Schäfer - Aug 30, 2011 7:12 AM

Darren: yes, the traffic horizon was increased to 120km ahead of your current position 2 weeks ago. We have decided to increase further to 160km what will happen shortly. In addition we are working on further adaptations of the concept to make the routing even more efficient reacting to the latest great coverage and message quality improvements with our HD Traffic 5.0 version. With HD Traffic 5.0 we are using OpenLR location referencing in the entire road network to announce traffic messages what is unique.

Lim François - Aug 31, 2011 9:52 AM

I use TomTom Traffic on my iPhone 4 and I have noticed by 2 times that the motorway closures in France was not indicated. Moreover, only traffic jams was shown on the screen. Can you tell me how it is possible?

Ralf-Peter Schäfer - Aug 31, 2011 11:28 AM

Lim: For the incident messages as road work and road closures we are working with 3rd parties. In France those messages comes from governmental sources, fequently not complete or 100% precise. So far unfortunately we are missing some messages. We are working on improvements using our Community. An example is the MapShare feedback on the device where customers can report map errors and road works.

Mario - Aug 31, 2011 10:38 AM

HD Traffic: In Italy very good precision on autoroute like E55. Not so good in indicating valid alternative. In any case consumers like more precision on the maps and in Italy there are some importa road with wrong OneWay in touristic city too.

Ralf-Peter Schäfer - Aug 31, 2011 11:31 AM

Mario: HD Traffic in Italy was lately introduced and we have reach quite accurate jam announcements on highways and major secondary roads. The coverage on smaller major roads depends on the growth path of our connected Community incl. VF users, connected PNDs, fleet and in-dash TomTom devices. Here we see significant accelleration what will help to improve the detour advices incl. for smaller major roads. Recently we introduced with HT Traffic version 5 an expanded coverage for jam announcements using our OpenLR location referencing technology. This technology allows to report incidents on smaller non-TMC roads as well and expanded the number of jam announcements during rush hours up to 60% in Italy. The map quality in italy is quite good and we are using our TomTom Community to accellerate further the update of our map more frequent as in the past.

Peter Sharpe - Aug 31, 2011 11:22 AM

I'm not sure that's always a good idea Darren. I found that by looking too far ahead, the device plotted unnecessary diversions for temporary blockages that would have cleared well before the time that you would have reached them.

Ralf-Peter Schäfer - Aug 31, 2011 11:36 AM

Peter: You are raising a very good point. Indeed to resolve the issue with a very large bounding box will not give automatically bring a good user experiences travelling from A to B. It's important to look about the type of message and the expected delay in any offered bounding box. Jams which are far away from your current position can disapear until you reach the location. A predictive view is an important angle.

Ciaran - Aug 31, 2011 12:34 PM

Apologies in advance for the long post, but I'm wondering about the rerouting timeframe, and how it might be possible to link it with the distance, location and time of the journey. This would create journey "profiles", for example: * A morning or evening commute in a major metropolitan area might be forty-five minutes, but only twenty miles; or even one hour, and thirty miles or so (etc.). In those cases, the forty minute window would probably be correct (at least in Los Angeles, where rush hour traffic incidents tend to get cleared off quickly, unless it's very serious or injuries and/or death occurred). * On the other hand, a one hundred mile journey, or longer, might need to be aware of incidents for the entire length of the journey, but only reroute around those that are one hour or ninety minutes from the current location (and in the direction of travel). This would be dependent on "local" rerouting options around the location. * Longer journeys than one hundred miles might typically include comparatively rural locations. In those cases, it might be advantageous to include incidents for the entire length, but with a shorter rerouting window. * Then there are also busy corridors of significant length. Examples might be San Diego to Los Angeles to Santa Barbara and beyond; the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. between Washington D.C. and northeast of New York city (maybe to around New Haven, CT); or between Manchester, Birmingham and London in the U.K.? I'm sure there are others in Germany, with their dense network of Autobahns. For travel in those areas, it might be necessary to account for incidents along the entire length of the journey, but with a longer rerouting window so that problematic areas can be avoided entirely early on. * In countries like France, Autoroutes with tolls frequently have excellent "National" highways running almost parallel, so those can offer excellent avoidance options within a mere forty minute travel window for single severe incidents, even on much longer trips. However, severe congestion due to multiple incidents on a holiday weekend might require avoiding one large section of a journey completely. Those are just examples of "journey profiles", that could be entirely inappropriate, but I'm trying to demonstrate the feasibility of such an approach, so use your imagination to fill in the blanks or make corrections. Maybe TomTom have sufficient data to tweak those numbers and profiles to where they need to be. It seems as though there might be a way to estimate a small number of journey profiles, and adjust the traffic avoidance options accordingly. Maybe a sophisticated form of IQ Routes and intelligent HD Traffic.

Ralf-Peter Schäfer - Sep 1, 2011 10:47 AM

yes agree. for the typical urban trip e.g. commuters the setup is fine and works very well in our current HD Traffic system. For the long trips the fundamental question you are raising is the ability to predict incidents along your planned trip let's say 1.5 hours plus to the time horizon which have an effect on your route choice to select the appropriate corridor at the beginning of the trip. In Germany a typical example is a trip from the Ruhr area e.g. Essen to the Frankfurt area where you have to make an early choice which side of the Rhine reiver you will use (highway selection). The basic thing here is how good and reliable my prediction algorithms works for locations let say 2 hours ahead. TomTom is currently using historic predictive information with time dependent speed profiles and jam predictions based on milllions of anonymous trip data collected from the TomTom Probe Vehicle Community. Together with real-time traffic and the fastest and most precsise route planner implemented on TomTom devices this setup brings the best results in a most scalable way. Of course that's not the end of the game and more sophisticated stuff will appear.

dhn - Aug 31, 2011 12:43 PM

HD service also up and running in Canada -- finally!

Ralf-Peter Schäfer - Sep 1, 2011 10:50 AM

dhn: yes HD Traffic Canada is live for a number of met areas. Please have a look at routes.tomtom.com for current coverage within Canada.

MVL - Aug 31, 2011 9:11 PM

Regarding the traffic horizon: I understand the desire to discard faraway traffic incidents that might clear, but if a routing decision needs to be made early (eg which faraway mountain pass to take), any incidents represent deviations from the norm, and is the best possible guess at traffic situations upon arrival. The bigger concern is that Tomtom clients never recheck to see if an incident cleared (when a detour has no traffic), which would allow a reroute back to the original road. Activating this check would eliminate all the "faraway false positive" concerns that led to a bounding box in the first place. Or, another idea: In prior discussions with Tomtom engineers, I learned that sophisticated statistical algorithms are used to determine the likelihood of a jam remaining when no probes are in an area. It seems like another solution to the "bounding box" problem would be to broadcast the statistical duration of each incident, so that the client can decide on its own if it will clear by the time it arrives. Certainly many ways to tackle an issue, but a client horizon of 40 min on the go 1000 series is way way too short.

MVL - Aug 31, 2011 9:19 PM

First I have to say that HD traffic is an absolutely outstanding product. Far and away the best in the industry. But, I find it very disappointing that there are zero in-dash HD traffic solutions in the USA. The Fiats, Subarus, XNVs in the USA are all non-HD-traffic enabled. My read of the web forum community shows that there is a large pent-up demand for in-dash HD traffic. Please work to get both OEM and aftermarket solutions to market soon.

MVL - Aug 31, 2011 9:33 PM

I've always found it a bit odd that HD traffic can only report slower-then-average delays, and it seems like IQroutes compensates by publishing something like 75th percentile (faster than median) speeds. Wouldn't it be better if IQroutes published median speeds, and HD traffic was able to publish speeds both slower AND faster than IQroutes? It seems that this would better handle holiday and school vacation "lack of traffic" events.

Ralf-Peter Schäfer - Sep 1, 2011 10:54 AM

MVL: TomTom is currently rolling-out connected in-dash navigation with HD Traffic. This is part of our broader platform strategy to use all available hardware to deploy our great HD Traffic service and navigation software. Over the last two years TomTom put 1 million in-dash navigation devices into the market, mainly with Renault. The lastest version is fully connected incl. our HD Traffic service for Europe. Fiat is also using an embbedded connected PND solution with HD Traffic. Our intent is to roll-out this concept incl. the HD Traffic service delivery to 3rd party navigation platform in all available markets (incl. US).

Ralf-Peter Schäfer - Sep 1, 2011 10:59 AM

MVL: IQ Routes is our time-dependent speed profile product used on all TomTom navigation systems and assigns speed variations on TomTom map road stretches for any day of week in a high temporal resolution of 5 minutes intervals. Billions of anonymously collected speed information from our 55 Million devices installed base are the basis for IQ Routes. For the night hours a free flow speed (flat speed) is computed. The free flow speed is the reference speed for any jam announcement for HD Traffic if the speed over the day when the measured speed in HD Traffic falls below the given jam threshold. (e.g. for highways starts below 60 km/h speed) So far this concept also avoids false alarms during hoidays and school vacations.