Inside TomTom's Traffic products: TomTom Traffic Flow

The first step to steering clear of congestion? Understanding how traffic is moving at all times. TomTom Traffic Flow draws on data from millions of connected vehicles to deliver the authoritative view of traffic movements — for better navigation, richer traffic visualization and safer driving.

Every day, all over the world, hundreds of millions of vehicles travel through the streets of our cities. As these cars, trucks, buses and more make their way, their movements are tracked, analyzed and amalgamated, forming an eye-opening picture of how traffic moves. Welcome to the world as seen by TomTom Traffic Flow.

TomTom’s solution tracks traffic movements and supports a range of applications, from helping navigation apps plan optimal routes to visualizing traffic movements in rich detail for city planners.

Get to know TomTom Traffic Flow

TomTom Traffic Flow delivers a comprehensive view of how traffic is moving on any road, at any given time. The solution provides detailed information on current observed speeds and travel times, along with additional information characterizing the traffic, thanks to millions of data points from real-world, real-time sources (more on this shortly).

This map of Houston, Texas, illustrates how TomTom Traffic Flow data canbe used to display real-time traffic conditions. Green lines show where traffic flowing freely, orange where there is light traffic and red where there is heavy traffic.

Traffic Flow captures various speed values, including the current speed on a particular stretch of road and free-flow speed — the latter refers to the speed measured (in meters per second) on a roadway when no traffic is present. It can also calculate relative speed, which compares average speed to free-flowing speed, and displays this as a percentage value. As an example, at rush hour, the relative speed on a highway might be 50% – meaning it’s moving twice as slowly, or at half the speed, as it does when there is no traffic present.

This speed information is incredibly useful for a whole range of navigation and routing use cases. By analyzing real-road speeds, Traffic Flow enables routing engines to calculate highly accurate journey times and provide optimal time-dependent route recommendations. And because it works with near-real-time data, the service can detect if there’s an unforeseen interruption to typical road conditions (like a one-off road accident) allowing routing and navigation systems to make updates on the fly and guide drivers onto faster routes.

As Monika Pepikj, TomTom Traffic Product Manager, notes: “Traffic Flow is a very flexible solution. It’s used in all of TomTom’s sat navs [PNDs], in-dash navigation systems and apps like TomTom AmiGO and GO Navigation. It also makes up an important part of the Traffic map layer on Orbis Maps, allowing users to visualize current traffic flows on top of their base map.”

Predicting future speeds

Not only does Traffic Flow provide a comprehensive view of current traffic movements, it can also calculate future traffic speeds — giving users a heads-up about what the traffic situation might look like in the minutes and hours ahead. The solution’s predictive flow features provide predictive speeds for 15, 30 and 45 minutes into the future, as well as longer-range predictive speeds for up to 24 hours into the future.

These capabilities are especially useful when planning long journeys. By taking future traffic speeds into consideration, Traffic Flow helps routing and navigation systems calculate more accurate estimated times of arrival (ETAs) and estimated travel times (ETTs). Imagine, for instance, that a family is making a weekend trip from Manhattan to New Haven. With Traffic Flow looking ahead to anticipated speeds in an hours’ time, when the family is closer to their destination, it can work with the car’s navigation system to provide a much more accurate ETA.

Putting it all on the map

On top of compiling and analyzing speed data, Traffic Flow offers visualization features to bring this raw information to life and make it easier to digest. Visualization converts speed data into different colors (usually green, yellow and red) to indicate either the speed of traffic on different road segments or the difference between that speed and the free-flow speed on the road segment in question.

Traffic Flow also shares additional information about traffic conditions, displayed on a map view as text. Based on the observed traffic speed, the solution can indicate whether there is stationary, slow or heavy traffic. It can also indicate if a particular segment of road is closed to traffic because of road works for example. This data adds an extra layer of context about current traffic conditions, so users are better informed about what’s happening on the road.

Built on the best traffic data in the business

How does Traffic Flow bring together such a comprehensive picture of traffic speeds and movements? It draws on the same data used in all of TomTom’s Traffic solutions — a wealth of information that the company has been building and enhancing for more than 30 years.

Every day, TomTom gathers more than 60 billion anonymous data points from its network of over 660 million connected GPS devices. The company uses this real-time data to update products like Traffic Flow every 30 seconds, providing users with the freshest information about travel speeds on pretty much any route.

“TomTom has built up a very rigorous process for capturing, processing and integrating data,” explains Pepikj. “This allows us to deliver traffic information as it happens, with the lowest possible latency, so we can equip drivers and navigation systems with reliable views of what’s happening on the road.”

Traffic Flow is delivered as a RESTful API, making it easy for customers to integrate it into their own systems and applications. TomTom also offers access to Traffic Flow as part of its End-User Traffic and Intermediate Traffic products, where it combines with another real-time traffic service: TomTom Traffic Incidents (which you can read all about in an upcoming blog).

No matter how organizations choose to use Traffic Flow, the service is made to empower people and businesses with reliable, real-time information about how traffic is moving — so they can make better-informed decisions, plan smoother travels and stay one step ahead of congestion.