VOICES Traffic Data - Page 5

ryguy · 05-13-2004, 04:11 PM

This is an excellent idea, and will be a fantastic edition to Voices. Its too bad there isn't a national weather/traffic source out there. It would be very useful for many applications to have a database of weather/traffic/road conditions that could be used worldwide!

veetid · 05-13-2004, 06:55 PM

I got MapMarker to batch Geocode Intersections and its really accurate. Alot more than I expected. It was accurate enough to differeniate between the two sides of the Interstate/Freeway. I am going to try and get all the lat/long info for all of CA tommorrow. This same technic, if it works out, can be used for a lot of independent sites to gather information for other states.

stevieg · 05-14-2004, 03:36 AM

Cool, sounds grat. is MapMarker only for the US, as this would be useful for a lot of the european info sites

robr · 05-14-2004, 06:09 AM

dont know if there is anything useful that you havent already found, but i came across this page looking for a new battery:

http://www.ntb.com/trafficinfo.htm
National Traffic and Road Closure Information

stevieg · 05-14-2004, 08:42 AM

will check it out

veetid · 05-14-2004, 11:45 AM

MapMarker is not limited to the US. It is global... It is pretty much the industry standard for geocoding. I just happen to have a copy of it, because we use it at work for geocoding lat/longs for appraisal properties. I work with a company that has the 2nd largest Database for appraisal data in the US. I hopefully can make a good easy system for geocoding with it, that way I can geocode stuff for people. Unfortuntately I couldn't give the software out. It takes about fifty security checks and all new licenses / mac addresses for the machines to install it. You have to get on the phone with them everytime you move it and I think the software cost around the range of over $100,000 (US).....

One bad thing.... I am not sure if my company has the data for anything outside of the US.... I know it was about 7 cd's, but I will have to look into it.

veetid · 05-14-2004, 05:29 PM

I finally entered in all of San Diego... It included 312 exits across all the freeways. I then ran it through mapmarker and it was able to find 72% of the intersections. So that left 89 exits off. I attached an updated image. I guess at this point I would have to get those 89 lat/longs individually (take forever) or just say 72% of the exits of a town is good enough.

One thing I have noticed is that from a high view you can't tell the two different lanes on the interstate. You can't differniate between North, South, East, West. My idea was after I get the lat/longs I would need to determine if they are North, South, West, East and then offset them in the proper direction. Example: If you have a lat/long for a Interstate going South you would want to modify the lat/long to be offset to the left a little bit. That way it would actually sit a little off the Interstate to the left and so forth if you had one going North you would want to offset to the right a little bit.

Just an update on what I found so far....

stevieg · 05-14-2004, 06:00 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by veetid

I finally entered in all of San Diego... It included 312 exits across all the freeways. I then ran it through mapmarker and it was able to find 72% of the intersections. So that left 89 exits off. I attached an updated image. I guess at this point I would have to get those 89 lat/longs individually (take forever) or just say 72% of the exits of a town is good enough.

One thing I have noticed is that from a high view you can't tell the two different lanes on the interstate. You can't differniate between North, South, East, West. My idea was after I get the lat/longs I would need to determine if they are North, South, West, East and then offset them in the proper direction. Example: If you have a lat/long for a Interstate going South you would want to modify the lat/long to be offset to the left a little bit. That way it would actually sit a little off the Interstate to the left and so forth if you had one going North you would want to offset to the right a little bit.

Just an update on what I found so far....

With what you've done so far, would it be possible to generate a list of location names as they appear at the source with the corresponding lat/lon, then I can have a go at pulling the data in and tranlating the traffic data.

PS What's the mappoint control based software in the screenshot?

veetid · 05-14-2004, 06:57 PM

I solved the problem with the pushpins being too close together. I now take the lat/long and based on direction N,S,E,W I calculate an offset, which places the pushpins off the Interstate/Highway. Now you can see the difference in the direction. I posted a new screenshot. Now you can actually look at the 5 and tell if there is traffic on the North or the South, or Both.

When I am done I will have an XML file that will have all the locations and exits of CA and there lat/longs and direction. I can then supply you with a piece of code that will show you how to update the speeds from a site. You can run that code as often as you like to update your DB. It is fairly simple code and should be easy to convert to anything.

I will also talk with the VOICES man to let him know how I offset the pushpins and got it to seperate the directions on the map.

As for the program I am using.... I wrote this whole thing in .NET C#. The mappoint control software in the screenshot is mine.

ryguy · 05-15-2004, 03:04 PM

Not sure if there is any way to extract this type of information...but i stumbled across this today:

http://www.highwayconditions.com

stevieg · 05-15-2004, 04:13 PM

Data Sources

Thanks for all the different sources of US data some of you have posted, from looking at it it would take a long time to get basic data for the entire US, and of course there is no guarantee that the plotted positions would be right if I rush through as many as possible.

What is probably most practical is if you want traffic data for your area, suggest the best source that you would feel confident in trusting. I don't know america and am reluctant to spend 3 days creating code to import the data if to later find out the data is no good to anyone!

In addition to this, if the source does not offer lat/lon positions then the best alternative is to do the same as veetid and map these locations out on MapPoint with names that match the locations given out on the web site as pushpins. I can export these pushpins as lat/lon and add them as references in the database.

The web site format needs to be machine-interpretable to some degree, at best this would be TSV/CSV/XML format with lat/lon, at worst a text page set into tables with common descriptions of locations; i.e. the page would have been machine-generated. Flash/graphic based pages are more complicated, but if that is the only data source for your area there is a possibilty that the data is pulled from a text-based source behind the scenes (i.e. Trafficmaster in the UK) so if there is no other option I will give it a go.

If you're better at me at coding (which doesn't take a lot) you might want to write you own app to download, parse and upload the data. If so let me know. I have no problems in releasing the source to anything I write to do with this or the specifications such as db table structures.

stevieg · 05-26-2004, 05:16 PM

Here's the first 'Proof of Concept' application if you want to see the traffic data on the move.

Download from http://www.stevieg.org/traffic/traffic.zip

The application currently runs independantly, and works well as an external app in MediaCar. It requires a GPS signal to centre the map on your current location so you can see the traffic nearby.

If you want to run it at the same time as other apps, you will need a COM port splitter - see http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=23174

You'll also need a GPRS or other internet connection to try it on the move; however if you want to test at home look for a GPS simulator (theres one in the above thread)

It runs using MapPoint Control, so if you have VOICES working you should be fine.

You will need to change the INI file to reflect your settings such as username on the StevieG.org traffic site

It's of most interest to UK users at the moment as that has the working data feeds so it could actually be used now by us Brits.

Note that thanks go to Jamez_Warner for so kindly borrowing me some source code to a basic GPS app so I could get the GPS part of this working

Here is a screen shot, have fun.

Laidback · 05-26-2004, 05:32 PM

Does that map show any traffic data??

Shouldn't it be lighting up/ringing alarm bells and telling you to keep the f**k away from the M6 around Brum?

ryguy · 05-26-2004, 05:33 PM

So i presume that "do not enter" icon on the top left refers to a traffic jam? Any idea how we can get this in north america?

Looks very impressive! Now we just need to integrate this into voices!

ry

stevieg · 05-26-2004, 05:56 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by Laidback

Does that map show any traffic data??

Shouldn't it be lighting up/ringing alarm bells and telling you to keep the f**k away from the M6 around Brum?

Not at this time of night. However the only reason I wrote this IS because of the M6 around brum which I have to drive into and it's a game of russian roulette at the best of times; though in a weeks time they are going to be roadworks and without this I am f*%$ed!!