Updates
4/1/2008 - Calculate Route, Priority Queues
3/31/2008 - Importing TIGER data, find intersections, find road segments, distance stored procedure, speeds, distance/speed data
TrafficMan is a project to incorporate real and real-time traffic data into the algorithms used to calculate routes and travel times. Often I wonder if taking the highway or a back-road is the fastest route; now I will in corporate real traffic and travel times into the equations
There are several sources for travel data. A driver can use the travel times and speeds from past trips. This is a great start to improving travel trips and times because often a road that slows down during rush hour, does the same thing every weekday. Also, if drivers could share their current travel speeds, they could inform drivers behind them of the speeds they are going on roads. Also, estimates to travel speeds and times can be derived from traffic reports and cameras.
Once driving speeds and times are acquired, they can be used to improve traffic routing. Most mapping programs guess the speeds of roads from the type of road (i.e., Interstates are 65mph, US highways are 55mph, etc), or from a database of speed limits. This is pretty accurate when traveling without traffic, however during times of high traffic, or accidents, the travel times are not as accurate
TrafficMan intends on improving travel routes and time estimates by incorporating this data. The final product could be a better GPS program for your car or mobile device, or a web-based application, or both.
In this project, I will post my steps in researching this. I would also like help from the community to improve the process, optimize the calculations and provide data. Please contact me if you are interested!
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