Traffic Scotland Information Service
Peter Cullen
Travel Information Manager
Transport Scotland
Overview
• - Traffic Scotland Information Services
• - Traffic Scotland website usage
• - 3 Year TSIS development strategy
• - New technology opportunities
• - Traffic Scotland Radio Service
Traffic Scotland Information Service Hierarchy
Ranked by Audience Reach
Pre-Trip/On trip
On-Trip
Web Site
(desktop/mobile)
Internet Radio Service
Mobile web application and Smartphone
Apps (i-Phone, Android & Blackberry)
Twitter/RSS feeds
Traffic Customer Care Line
VMS/Kiosks
Traffic Scotland Information Service
Traffic Scotland Information
Service Platforms
Websites (Desktop & Mobile)
Traffic Scotland/Freight Scotland
Potential Audience Reach
max delivered to date 115 m page impressions in month
of Dec 2010
equates to 1.1m distinct IP addresses. Resilient to spike
demand. Upgrades will also support this.
Internet Radio
Potential delivery to circa 1.5 million users
over a 24 hour period
Mobile Apps
Currently 84,000 downloads for I-Phone and Android.
Stats feed through to TS website usage
Twitter
Traffic Customer Care Line
VMS/Kiosks
Twitter has currently 6,200 followers
and growing
A normal demand of 70 calls per day,
however seasonal spikes in demand
139 VMS and currently there are 3 kiosks: Gretna Green (A74);
Ballinluig Services (A9) and Harthill Service (M8)
Timeliness of Travel Information
Sources
Platforms
Timeliness
Traffic Scotland
Control Centre
Trafficscotland.org
Real-time
& Regular Updates
Trafficlink
Traffic Scotland Radio
Pre-recorded
Regular Updates
Customer Care Line
Customer Care Line
Real time &
Regular Updates
Mobile/Smart-Phone
Real-time
& Regular Updates
Twitter and RSS Feeds
Real-time
Traveline Scotland
Multi-Agency Response
Team (MART)
3rd Party – Met Office;
Further Event News
Provision of Variable Message Signs
*139 Variable Message Signs
Traffic Scotland Information Service Usage
2006:
2007:
2008:
2009:
2010:
Page Impressions
31 m
35 m
58 m (40 m predicted)
137m (52 m December 2009)
328 m (113 m December 2010)
- Q1: 115 m
- Q4: 171 m
- 06 December – 21.6 m
Traffic Scotland Page Impressions
Press Coverage
Events of Winter 2010
Traffic Scotland website usage during severe weather:
Record daily highs
- 29th November – 12.2 million page impressions
- 6th December – 21.6 million
Sustained period of high usage
- > 3 million page impressions on 8 further days
Twitter subscribers – grew by 150% in a few days
To put in context:
Previous one day highs
- 8.6 million (January 2010)
- 5.6 million (January 2009)
Average daily use:
- 2010 - 75k
- 2009 - 31k
Traffic Scotland Performance Figures
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Percentage up time = 100%
Percentage down time = 0%
Average response time = 0.876 seconds
Total comms usage December: 2,058GB (367GB 6th December)
TSIS 3 Year Development Strategy
TSIS Deployment Strategy 2011-2013:
Key Milestones
Traffic Scotland Information Service
Implementation of series of Winter Projects to enhance 2011 response
Website enhancements
• - Precautionary Treatment Plans
• - Weather Station Integration
• - Weather page updates
• - LEV professional user updates
• - Additional CCTV
Hardware
- New virtualised solution, will assist with TSCC migration; and in
- disaster recovery / resilience
Software architecture
- Content Management System and web data layer re-architecture
All this investment supports future development of TS Information Services
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Ensuring resilience and robustness – 100% availability when needed most by users
and stakeholders
Changing the way information is delivered to users
Changing the way information is delivered
to users
Traffic Scotland Mobile Service
• Advent of “smart” devices offers chance to improve the way
information is presented and delivered to users
• Decision to introduce new Traffic Scotland Mobile Service
– Push information, Alerts
– Harness functionality of smart devices
– - Personalisation: My Traffic Scotland
• - Key routes
• - Regions
- Location based
– - What’s Near Me
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Traffic Scotland works in partnership with Traveline Scotland
– to expand existing “on the move” travel applications and ensure they
cover both public transport and the strategic road network
TS Mobile Service - Phased Approach
Phase 1 launch of new mobile TS website (July 2011) featured:
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- What's near me
- Real-time information relevant to the users’ location and distances to events
- Map based views
- “quick wins” using existing PDA site data sets
Phase 2: November 2011 new features:
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- Park and Ride facilities
- Weather station data
- Winter precautionary treatment plans
- Campaigns (such as winter driving)
- Personalised information
- Links to other traffic / journey planning mobile applications
- Social media integration
- Internet traffic radio – Traffic Scotland Radio
Subsequent Phases
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- Further personalisation, alerts and pushing information
Traffic Scotland Mobile Service
Traffic Scotland Radio
Proposed service level of “dip in” Traffic Scotland Radio :
– Three bulletins per hour at peak times
– Two bulletins per hour during weekends and off peak
times
– Planned (roadworks) bulletins
– Planned public transport bulletins (e.g. rail
engineering works)
– Additional alert or event bulletins relating to weather
warnings or major
– event information
– Campaign messages e.g. cross promotion of other
journey planning service (Traveline Scotland), deer,
eco driving, ready winter etc
– http://mtsdev.ibigroup.com/trafficradio/
Objectives of the new trial service is:
• to use technology to deal with the majority of public enquiries by
getting information to a device the user has with them
• to reduce heavy load on the Traffic Customer Care Line during
extreme weather and other events
• to complement and enhance existing live traffic information on
the TS website
• content will be delivered 24 hours a day with increased
frequency of updates during extreme weather conditions
Available on multiple platforms:
• the Traffic Scotland desktop Website
• mobile phone applications including smart devices (iPhone/Android/
and soon on Blackberry)
• also via a standard telephone connection as an option on the Traffic
Customer Care Line