Traffic.com Unveils Breakthrough 'Fastest Drive Now' Feature

Jan. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Traffic.com, a NAVTEQ company, and a leading provider of traffic solutions to consumers and businesses, unveiled today a beta version of a "fastest drive now" feature available at www.traffic.com. Traffic.com now provides commuters the ability to easily obtain simultaneous results for address-to-address drives and traffic optimized drives. Drivers across the U.S. can now obtain the point A-to-B travel information they need to make the best decisions about when to leave and the fastest drive to take. Traffic.com solutions are completely free to consumers.

Traffic.com users begin checking their drive times by entering a point A origin and point B destination address. Site visitors instantly obtain their basic directions-based drive information as well as an alternate traffic optimized "fastest drive now" that takes into account the current traffic and traffic trending conditions along the way. An accompanying interactive traffic map provides color-coded highlighted drives, pinpointed accident, construction and event icons as well as surrounding red, yellow and green real-time traffic flow on area roadways.

With the ability to compare the side-by-side basic drive and traffic optimized drive information, users can easily assess the real-time conditions and select their best possible drive at that moment. Also provided with the beta release is dynamic interactive drive editing giving users the ability to instantly create custom drive time information simply by clicking and moving highlighted drives to alternate roadways on the map.

"We are excited to launch this innovative online drive time feature that brings a new level of traffic-aware information to consumers to help them manage their daily drives with meaningful, personally relevant content," said NAVTEQ EVP John MacLeod. "Traffic conditions can change from one minute to the next, and driving preferences are unique to every driver. By putting easy-to-use, dynamic commute management tools at our site visitors' fingertips, we help drivers save time and fuel and alleviate the frustrations traffic delays cause."

The Traffic.com "fastest drive" functionality is powered by NAVTEQ Map and NAVTEQ Traffic data and leverages a variety of industry tools, it allows users to:

• Input of A-to-B addresses on the site homepage and traffic content pages
• Compare directions-based drive times with traffic optimized fastest drives using: Current drive times, At speed limit drive times, Total delay times
  
• Get total distance in miles for A-to-B fastest drives and direct drives
  
• Drag-and-drop map editing to create custom drive time information
  
• Obtain A-to-B directions for all drives
  
• Save drives and create MyTraffic custom alerts to be sent by email, voice, or SMS
  

In addition to the "fastest drive now" beta feature, Traffic.com visitors can also access traffic information using an array of free commute management solutions including:

• HTML email traffic alerts and scheduled reports sent to your PC
  
• Text-only email traffic alerts and scheduled reports sent to your mobile device
  
• Voice traffic alerts and scheduled reports sent to your cell phone or landline
  
• SMS text message updates obtained by texting a city code to TRAFC (87232)
• Toll-free traffic hotline updates obtained by calling 1-866-MY-TRAFC (1-866-698-7232)
• Wireless web (WAP) site traffic hotspot updates accessed with any web-enabled device at http://mobi.traffic.com