Nectec pioneers service that's now open to the public,
Sasiwimon Boonruang
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| Commuters are now able to view BMA’s traffic sign boards and the traffic conditions of Bangkok and its suburbs in real time via the Web and on mobile phones, according to Dr Wasan Pattara-atikom. |
Daily commuting for many in Bangkok should become a little easier now that we can check the road traffic conditions, either in a browser or on mobile phones that can access the Internet.
This has been enabled in a new service called Traffy pioneered by the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec)'s Intelligent Transportation System Program research team. The "Road Traffic Information and Estimation" project is now open to the public at http://traffy.nectec.or.th.
Project leader Dr Wasan Pattara-atikom said the service provided traffic reports in real time with information about traffic congestion, incident reports, construction areas, risk points, points of interest and the location of CCTV cameras.
Traffy combines traffic information from the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA)'s 40 intelligent traffic signboards and from the Expressway Authority of Thailand (EAT).
"The web site provides traffic information in real time and routing tools help commuters plan their route," Dr Wasan said, adding that users would see the red and green signs showing the traffic conditions along each particular route.
Traffic information was represented by highlighted lines and markers on the road map provided by Google Maps' through its API.
Under development for a year and a half, the program is now complete, being 90 per cent accurate and is used by the Highway Police.
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| The Traffy web site (http://traffy.nectec.or.th) shows where the bottlenecks are. |
The service is already to the public and later this year Nectec will invite people to share information by reporting on traffic condictions at their location. People were "good sensors" as they knew well the traffic conditions that they faced, he said.
The program also provides toolboxes such as a time machine toolbox, driving directions toolbox and a road search engine. These toolboxes enable commuters to receive predictions of traffic conditions.
For example, if someone wants to travel from Sri Nakarin Road to Ratchatewi, Traffy will suggest the route to take together with the distance to be travelled, current traffic conditions and a 30-minute prediction of traffic conditions.
"In the near future, the program will suggest the route and allow commuters to search for a less-congested route using real-time traffic information," the project leader said.
The Traffy service is available on the Web as well as on three mobile phone platforms: Pocket PC (Windows Mobile), Java and Symbian.
Dr Wasan pointed out that users could access a real-time traffic report via mobile phones from anywhere. Commuters would be able to see a congestion report, a construction report, an incident report, variable message signs (VMS) and cellular network information. The cellular network information consisted of Mobile Country Code (MCC), mobile network code (MNC), location area code (LAC), cell ID and cell dwell time (CDT).
CDT is the duration that cellular phones remain associated with a base station before handing off to another base station.
Dr Wasan admitted that viewing the map on mobile phones might be inconvenient due to a limitations in display size and bandwidth. "We are working on how to make it easier for mobile phone users so they may just press a few keys to get traffic information, either character-based or in graphical format."
The service would also benefit logistics firms and companies associated with transportation, Dr Wasan added.
"If companies can perceive the traffic information, they will be able to do better planning and of course be able to save on transport costs," he said.
Traffy also has a tracking system via mobile phone. By installing an applet on a mobile phone, companies are able to track the location of vehicles. With cellular based tracking, the accuracy of the mobile tracking applet is accurate from between 500 metres and one kilometre. The mobile tracking system has been tested with some 40 vehicles of the National Science and Technology Agency (Nstda)
Mobile tracking can work with Pocket PC and Symbian platforms and now the development team is working to make it run on Java and the iPhone.
"We would like to make it really beneficial to users. It will be fine if they can save 5-10 minutes or can increase from five to seven or eight trips a day when transporting goods," Dr Wasan said.
Over the next year, Nectec will extend the program by opening it to the general public to report and share traffic information, no matter where they are. "This will be more of a social networking concept where content is generated by users," he said.
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