traffic.

There’s a few different sources of traffic data.

Traffic data

traffic loops. There’s a nice website of loop locations. It is sadly difficult to just get all this data. However, you can explore one spot pretty closely. For example this is the M11 Between M50/M11 and Bray North. Going south, the PM peak is around 1500. This was surprising to me - I had thought that the peak would be around 1700-1800. Going north, peak is at 0700, but traffic doesn’t drop to normal until 1000. I had felt that waiting until 0900 was a good move, but I might as well set off at 08330.

Tom tom

tomtom has an API. However, it requires an account etc which I don’t have.

Google maps

Google maps turns out to have an API. This will tell you everything you see in the google maps app or website, including expected duration, routes, traffic on the route etc. It takes a future time, and includes the route, the expected duration, traffic on the route etc. You can use the polyline decoder to put the route on a map.

Google has billing for the API, but I hope to fall into the 200 dollars free setup.

I don’t know how good google maps is. The variation in timings is not large. However, it does show a few different routes and traffic jams.

traffic cams etc

There’s also Traffic.tii.ie which is a nice overlay on open street map. It has a few sources of information:

• Current roadworks and incidents
• Images from traffic cameras
• current weather, including more cameras
• current journey times
• what the overhead signs say

The cameras are interesting. Firstly all the camera images are loaded on page load, for both the weather and traffic cams. However the image is a 640x480 still. The weather cams come with current weather information. I suspect that the traffic cams are being downscaled, and there is support for ALPR.

Anyway, still poking around at all this stuff.