SUNA Sydney taps taxis for road reports

Stephen Withers
Monday, 06 July 2009 12:58

Your IT - Entertainment

Sydney's taxi fleet is now helping to provide motorists with more accurate reports of traffic congestion delivered to their GPS units via SUNA.

SUNA, operated by Intelematics Australia,  transmits encoded traffic information alongside commercial FM broadcasts using the Traffic Message Channel (TMC) standard.

Running in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast, the service collects data from a variety of sources including traffic cameras, road sensors, and probe vehicles.

The number of probe vehicles in Sydney has been boosted by fitting taxis with GPS-based units that provide SUNA with information about travel times on the routes being followed. (Given Sydney taxi drivers' apparent reliance on GPS navigation, there's a certain symmetry in this arrangement.)

SUNA integrates the data from all the sources to identify points of congestion.

That information is transmitted alongside commercial FM broadcasts in the areas serviced, so it can be received and decoded by GPS navigation devices that comply with the TMC standard.

Many GPS units from the major suppliers have this capability, and will either warn drivers of problems ahead or (on upmarket units) automatically recalculate the route to avoid trouble spots.

The accuracy of SUNA reports in Sydney should also be increased by the addition of a further 50 traffic cameras to the network.