Powered by Intelematics – the guys behind the SUNA traffic channel for your satnav device – the Google traffic service appears on the maps as a coloured line over a major road or motorway. Green means, good, yellow means average congestion, red is heavy traffic and red/black means you’d be better off walking. The info is updated every few minutes, so it’s always ready to go.

In all honesty, this probably isn’t the most practical way of transmitting traffic information – exactly what is the difference between a yellow and red line, for example – but if it helps just one person avoid being late to a meeting because they went a different way to avoid traffic, then I guess it’s all worth it…

[Google Australia Blog]

Interesting factoids to reveal themselves during the interview is the drive of Suna into smartphones and the somewhat missed opportunity of digital radio. Adam also talks about upcoming features, like partnering with parking stations for realtime updates to the number of spaces available at any given time.

But enough from me. Head on over to Lifehacker to read all about it yourself.
[Lifehacker]

While the service won’t be anywhere near as comprehensive or practical as the navigation built-in to your satnav (which lets you reroute to avoid congestion), this service will instead act more like the traffic updates you get from the radio already, except in text form on new DAB+ radios.

It won’t cost anything to the user, so long as they have one of these new radio receivers in their car. And while most people aren’t going to head to the local auto shop and buy a new radio for their car, within a few years pretty much all the new cars will come standard with these new radios, meaning traffic information will be readily available for people who own shiny new cars.

Actually, even though this is a pretty cool service for digital radio (which is almost certainly going to struggle to gain traction here), it’d still be cheaper to just buy a traffic-enabled satnav…

Intelematics to give car radio a traffic overhaul
New digital radio service previewed at Gold Coast radio conference tomorrow

Thursday, October 9 2008 – Your car radio soon could know whether you will be late for work before you even head out the door, following the test of a new digital radio service by Intelematics Australia.

Intelematics has begun testing a new free-to-air service which would allow radio stations to deliver traffic flow information snapshots directly to motorists’ digital radios, including time taken to travel along motorways and major arterial roads.

The service will be demonstrated for the first time in Australia at the 2008 National Radio Conference on the Gold Coast tomorrow.

Intelematics, which already provides the SUNA real-time traffic service for portable GPS navigation devices, expects to launch the service in Australia next year. To receive the service, motorists would just need a digital receiver or device with a Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB+) chip and tune in to a supporting radio station.

The digital radio service allows motorists to receive short text-based traffic messages or images which are broadcast in conjunction with their regular radio station programs. Intelematics provides the information by accessing raw traffic flow data from a network of sensors embedded in the road to deliver real travel time information along major city arterials.

Adam Game, Chief Executive Officer, Intelematics said the flexibility of digital radio meant the service could be used a wide variety of ways.

“A radio station broadcasting commentary for a football final could send through information on traffic conditions around the ground for those travelling to the game,” Mr Game said.

“Other potential applications include daily travel time information on popular roads or alerts when significant accidents or other incidents occur.”

The demonstration at the conference will include the transmission of traffic data and presentation on a digital radio. Intelematics is hoping to undertake on-road testing during the coming months.

The Australian commercial radio industry is set to launch digital broadcasting in five capital cities – Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth in May 2009

Joan Warner, Chief Executive Officer, Commercial Radio Australia said the Intelematics service was a good example of the innovation that could be provided free to air by digital radio.

“Intelematics is developing a service that will have real benefit to radio audiences and highlight the capability of digital radio to deliver unique and innovative information streams at no cost to the listener,” Ms Warner said.

“The adoption of DAB+, a superior new technology that will enable radio stations to multichannel as well as broadcast a variety of multimedia and interactive programming, further positions Australia as a leader in digital radio broadcasting.”

[Intelematics]

It looks like all that’s about to change, however. I received an invite to the official launch of Sydney and Brisbane’s first real-time traffic information service. It’s an extension of the Melbourne SUNA offering, which is currently supported by most of the major satnav providers (albeit via an optional extra antenna, in most cases).

They’re also promising to announce some new local partnerships at the launch event, which happens on August 13. We’ll be there, so stay tuned for updates then.

[SUNA on Giz]

I went to the SmartDemo show last week, where Intelematics, a car intelligence systems company (owned by the RACV) were showing off Australia’s first traffic data system, SUNA Traffic Channel. SUNA (as in, get there ’sooner’… get it?) will be launching in September, and should be available through a number of GPS brands before Christmas.

The quick news is you should expect to pay between $100 and $300 extra for a unit with SUNA support, but that gives access for the life of the unit. The September date is for Melbourne (they’re actually already broadcasting there), with Sydney and Brisbane expected mid 2008, and Adelaide and Perth later next year.

For the longer take on why this is awesome news (and probably the best service in the world right now), and what you need to know right now if you’re thinking of buying sat nav (you should be able to buy a ‘traffic ready’ units now and upgrade later, if you just can’t wait for a fully operational unit), read on.

So, SUNA Traffic Channel is an implementation of the TMC (Traffic Message Channel) standard, in wide use across Europe and increasingly so in North America. This can be delivered over the air in a number of ways, and SUNA has gone with one of the most effective – they’ll be piggybacking a Radio Data Stream (RDS) onto commercial FM broadcast networks around the country to deliver the traffic information to your GPS.

If you haven’t heard much about this before, what the stream is sharing is a series of reports on disruptions to the regular flow of traffic. At a quiet time of day the system might have around 30 alerts, and at peak hour you’re talking 200-300. This data is then integrated into your nav and, depending on the quality of your nav and how it opts to integrate it, you will be informed of any alerts that relate to your current route. A basic system will point out issues, and the delays expected, while a very fancy system will do a lot more on the fly re-routing and detour calculation to help find you the best route possible. Good systems will also let you set filters on how big a delay something needs to cause before it bothers telling you about it.

SUNA Traffic Channel is a world-first system that is actually working with the state roads and traffic authorities. It’s actually getting access to the raw data available on the road network through the copper coils at intersections that run the traffic light control systems. On top of this they have access to high wind and ice sensors, where available, and where data is thin on the ground they are using pilot vehicles to send back information on traffic flow. Their human-powered control centre monitors incident causes too, so when your nav gets the message it is both aware of severity and, for your interest, whether the problem is a crash, road works, or even some kind of civil disobedience.

For those who have paid some attention to traffic data overseas, there have been stories on how RDS streams can be hacked, with false data injected. We asked Adam Game, Intelematics CEO, whether that could be an issue out here. He explained that while their system is based on the TMC open standard, their stream is encrypted, so someone would need to know how to convince the device it was the legitimate SUNA Traffic Channel stream. Even then, because they are delivered on a commercial FM band, the power requirements to override such a stream would make any such effort very short range. Game said it’s the GPS data that is much more at risk of being falsified, and that would only ever last a very short distance. In short, if some juveniles want to send out some false data for kicks, they’re going to a lot of effort to fool pretty much nobody.

If you want a unit that supports SUNA Traffic Channel, and for mine I think this is as ‘killer feature’ as killer features get, then you need to ask retailers if the sat nav you want to buy is TMC ready, or ‘traffic ready’, or even ‘SUNA Traffic ready’. TMC is the main query, really. You will be reliant on the brand updating that unit in future – some can be updated by software, but others can actually be upgraded through an alternate docking station that has the TMC support embedded in it. So if you already own, you might be able to upgrade in this way. In the next couple of months we’ll be seeing the first units arrive that are operational with SUNA, so they’ll be the ones to buy whether you are in Melbourne or not.

Intelematics told us they are working with Garmin, Mio, Navman, and Siemens brands right now. Down the track, services will also become available through mobile networks, so phone GPS folks won’t be out in the cold. As well as lifetime pricing models, Intelematics believes SUNA Traffic Channel could also be sold on a subscription basis by sat nav companies to make for cheaper entry costs, but that’s up to the market. It seems up front we’ll see flat all-in pricing.