Predictive Traffic Information to Revolutionize Navigation and Trip Planning

Powerful predictive traffic models are being developed by companies like Inrix, TrafficCast and Journey Dynamics, models that enrich historical and real-time speed profile data with metadata such as scheduled events, weather forecasts, vehicle type, and driving behavior. Commercial solutions are expected to be available in 2009.

“While real-time traffic solutions are useful for traffic congestion avoidance and improved calculation of the fastest route, they remain limited by their lack of forecasting accuracy,” says ABI Research director Dominique Bonte. “The increased reliability offered by traffic prediction models will contribute to traffic services reaching a mature phase, increasing consumers’ willingness to pay and driving uptake to more than 300 million users by 2013.”

Predictive traffic will enable time-dependent routing which takes into account future traffic conditions along the route. It will also make accurate and reliable up-front trip planning on fixed mapping sites such as MapQuest a reality. Proactive traffic alert messages will allow consumers to modify or postpone their travel. Professional users will appreciate the improved accuracy of Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA), while for vertical segments just-in-time routing techniques will increase the efficiency of trip and resource planning, thereby decreasing costs and improving customer service.

While the emergence of real-time two-way connected navigation devices for the upload of driver profile and behavior information will be an important driver for predictive traffic solutions, hybrid solutions based on local clients will dominate in the near future.

However, challenges related to user education, processing power and latency, and interactive user interfaces must be overcome before new forecast-based traffic use cases will be embraced by a large number of drivers.

ABI Research’s new study “Predictive Traffic Information” offers insight into the technologies, benefits, use cases, drivers, and barriers of predictive traffic solutions. It includes descriptions of the main players and subscriber forecasts per type and region. It forms part of the Location Aware Services and Commercial Telematics Research Services.

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