TomTom tracks traffic flow online for major international cities

The guys in the radio chopper might have the best view, but you can now see what they see as TomTom taps its traffic information into a highly useful website.

If you’re at all curious as to how the traffic is out there today — or any other day for that matter — you might want to turn to a website, as TomTom fights to remain useful in a world where the auto GPS is increasingly having its space encroached on by the smartphone and tablet.

But while you might have less reason to pull out the TomTom, the company still has some smarts working for it that smartphones don’t always get immediate access to, and traffic is one of them.

For its latest project — TomTom City — TomTom is letting people get a peak on how traffic is doing, relaying the information from its own traffic system to provide a detail look as to what traffic is like.

We’re talking congestion, traffic speed, and a look at the cities major junctions with simple colours demonstrating what you can expect, ranging from an optimal green to a super slow that turns up in red.

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“TomTom City gives drivers and traffic managers essential insights into the real-time traffic situation and the historical bottlenecks in key cities,” said Ralf-Peter Schafer, Head of Traffic at TomTom.

“This is an important step in our mission to help reduce delays for all drivers. Using data from over 450 million devices globally we are creating services that will help cities and connected cars work together to optimise the road network.”

In Australia, the TomTom Traffic webpage will only monitor traffic in Sydney, and that’s likely because TomTom wants you to check outs it GPS devices which will deliver traffic information for more places, or more than just Sydney.

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Overseas, The TomTom City will work in other places, with Auckland, London, Berlin, Moscow, and San Francisco chief among them, but that is only for the webpage, with traffic also coming to TomTom’s GPS navigation units outside of the page.

If you live in Sydney, though, it’s a neat look at how things are going for the town, and if you’re curious to see the sort of information TomTom tabulates, the Traffic webpage is handy for that too, something you can see for yourself at TomTom’s site.

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