Traffic Reports: Google maps vs. Traffic.com vs. Waze vs. Inrix vs. Staying put

LA traffic on the day before Turkey. Could you have avoided it?

One new service and two that are getting better every day are making it more and more possible to avoid bad traffic, if you remember to check before you head out.

The new service is called Waze, and is a great idea, and has gotten some good press. Essentially it takes the idea of crowdsourcing, and applies it to traffic and mapping. Millions of people are stuck in traffic, and lots of people enjoy being traffic reporters. Waze takes advantage of both those facts, and creates a map and a mobile phone interface that allow you to see where traffic is worst.

This competes, of course, with the traffic available on Google Maps, and with Traffic.com. (Full disclosure, I started a company called MyTrafficNews that was sold to Traffic.com in 2006. I'm no longer involved with Traffic.com, but I like all the people I worked with there. Also, I'm not including Mapquest in this comparison because they get traffic data from Navteq.)

The advantage Google has is that people use the maps applications so much. The turn-by-turn directions available through Google Maps on mobile phones works so well that people naturally use that application, and then traffic is added in so people check it out. As for data, Google is grabbing all of the speed data available from the various traffic departments around the country, and is pulling in more data from other partners such taxi fleets and more. All traffic providers say they pull in as much data as possible but don't give a lot of detail. Only Google really has the resources and history to understand the very nature of pulling in massive quantities of data.

Google is also reportedly getting speed data anonymously from cell towers. This is something I've been waiting on for years, and even spoke to the team at Airsage years ago because it's such a good idea. When a cell phone is moving, the towers know that it is moving because it has to be able to switch the call from tower to tower. If you could grab all the data anonymously for all the phones moving along the roads, you would know how fast the traffic is moving, on average. After years of trying, it looks like that's finally working, which is great to see.

Traffic.com, meanwhile has historically had trouble competing for the direct consumer, mostly because it's never really had that as a focus. It's better known inside the traffic world for providing services to TV and radio stations, and also to online applications such as Mapquest. It also provides service to many departments of transportation around the country by actually installing traffic speed sensors and providing the data.

It's too bad, really that Traffic.com doesn't have more of an impact directly for drivers. Traffic.com often has some of the best and fastest information in the industry, but very few regular people think to check that before they go out. (Competitors all borrow lots of information from Traffic.com, which is the easiest way to know that the team in Wayne, Pa., is doing a good job.)

Traffic.com has an iPhone app, too, and that's worthwhile. Both the iPhone app and the Traffic.com site, however, rely heavily on what Traffic.com calls a "Jam Factor." I've never been a fan of the Jam Factor for the public, even though I totally understand from an engineering perspective why Traffic.com likes it. You would think the good team at Traffic.com would learn from the fact that even though they have lots of Jam Factors to present, most of the media companies that have access to that data choose not to use it. It's only good for traffic nerds like me, most others just don't get it.

The new player on the block is Waze, which is trying to do something in a methodical way that we at MyTrafficNews did in a haphazard way: Use the drivers themselves to serve as a reporting force. Back before everyone had smartphones, we just had people call us with reports. It worked well, but wasn't very scalable. We would even call people we knew with a view of the highway after a report of an accident, and ask them if they saw any trouble. It was amazing how often we could get better information than the officials (who didn't know or care about the backups) or the established traffic organizations.

Waze makes it easy to report jams, incidents, even speed traps. The problem Waze has now, of course, is the quantity of the data. There are lots of reports for the areas surrounding the Waze offices in Palo Alto, Calif., but outside of that it trails off significantly. If there's uptake, this could be quite usefull for those outside the Silicon Valley.

Tangentially, I should also mention Trapster.com, which has a program for all the smart phones that allows you to report on, and avoid, speed traps. If there's no traffic and you can drive fast, it's a good idea to check this, but not if you are driving!

Some authorities have grumbled about Waze and Trapster providing speed trap info, but all the thoughtful police agencies know that reporting speed traps is a good thing because it broadens the true intent of the speed traps, which is to make sure everyone is driving safely. If a police chief is mad about someone blowing the lid on his speed trap, you know he's only trying to make more money by giving more tickets.

One other I should mention providing traffic information is Inrix, which is part of the Total Traffic Network. This is one of the legacy players, and they have funny corporate relationships that are never at all clear, and change every couple of years. Inrix has lots of big claims about having real-time data from sources other than the usual data feeds from the departments of transportation, etc., but in my time watching traffic closely a few years back, I only saw their data as, well, stale. It may have gotten lots better, but I don't see any evidence of that.

There's also Westwood One, which is the larger legacy traffic information outlet for radio stations, but it's struggling, cutting back and has lots of troubles.

There's one other player, and that's Clear Channel, the radio giant that's fallen on tough times of late because, well, because most radio station stink and now people have way more alternatives for music and information. They have a traffic division, but they are all but invisible for a regular consumer, or maybe they just should be.

The question I got asked the most when I was in the traffic business was about how to avoid traffic jams. The question was always about the route. The answer I always had was that there is no route that's going to save you any time, except in a few isolated incidents where a crash has tied up a highway. Even then, the traffic starts spilling out into the surface streets, which run much slower anyway.

The answer is always to just avoid driving in jams. Leave earlier or later, etc., based on the traffic conditions. And if bad traffic really makes you want to eat the steering wheel, then by all means just talk to your boss and convince him to let you work at home, where you will be more productive.

And to the larger questions about why traffic is bad in the first place... There is plenty of sicence, but the reality is that bad traffic is just emotionally draining but that it's a sign of an economy that's still working. If you are stuck in traffic every day, just spend a bit of that time appreciating the fact that you are driving to and from a job at all. I know that's not very satisfying, but with luck it helps keep a few extra minutes in slow traffic in perspective.