September 28, 2005

Predictive Traffic Services take a leap forward

Inrix announced today at CTIA Wireless 2005 that it has partnered with Tele Atlas, a leading provider of digital geographic content, to deliver Inrix Traffic Services to Tele Atlas partners and customers through a reseller agreement. As part of the agreement, Tele Atlas will also provide Inrix with the rights to resell and internally use Tele Atlas map data with Inrix's services.

Who is Inrix?
Inrix is a technology company from the Seattle area, funded with Microsoft seed money (I know I know), that has come up with technology to not only monitor traffic patterns, but based on some pretty sophisticated modeling, actually predict traffic flows. So, what happens as a result of the accident on the interstate? The technology understands how long before the road backs up, and how long it will take to clear the backup when the accident is cleared.

"Inrix's services analyze existing speed and incident data, historical data, weather conditions and forecasts, school calendars, major events, construction, holidays and other local variables unique to each market to accurately assess current traffic conditions as well as predict traffic patterns hours, days even months in advance. In fact, Inrix goes beyond current real-time traffic solutions by detecting and corrects erroneous sensor data and uniquely utilizing sophisticated Bayesian analysis, initially developed by Microsoft Research and exclusively licensed to Inrix, to calculate current and future traffic conditions with a higher degree of accuracy."

OK, Got it. So What?
Tele Atlas is a pretty big player in the market for providing maps to players like TomTom. They are also in agreement with Cobra.

"Cobra, a Tele Atlas partner, announced a partnership with the company to provide real-time traffic on the Cobra Nav One 4500 portable navigation device. Along with Clear Channel Radio, Tele Atlas will provide up-to-the minute information on traffic incidents, congested roads and construction zones in 48 major metropolitan areas across the country, covering nearly 70 percent of the U.S. population."

So, does this mean that we can start to expect Cobra Nav One 4500 to start offering the Inrix technology? If this works, will the next generation of Garmin StreetPilot 2720 or Magellan RoadMate include the PREDICTIVE technology that would be the weapon in missing traffic that you always dreamed of?