Besides frustration, missed meetings, cold dinners, and day-care late charges for individual commuters, traffic delays can also wreak havoc on businesses. Carefully planned delivery schedules can go awry before the first stop of the day, and mobile service providers (such as plumbers, electricians, and appliance installers) can be late for appointments - and frustrated customers may buy somebody else's product next time.

Let's assume that you own an office supply company that delivers supplies and repairs commercial coffee stations. Your dispatcher needs to schedule deliveries and service calls as efficiently as possible. Route planning software can compute the shortest distance between service calls, or which calls should be scheduled at the beginning or the end of a technician's daily route. Experience can help your dispatcher make judgments about how much travel time to schedule between appointments (based on "how long it usually takes" to travel a particular stretch of road). But what if there's an accident, or a construction project that's tying up traffic on the highway as your technician is leaving her first appointment and going to her second? By the time she pulls up to the end of the backup and crawls through traffic to the next exit, she'll be late - throwing off the schedule for the rest of the day, frustrating your customers, and causing your employee to work more overtime hours. What if she could find out about the traffic problem as she's leaving - in time to choose an alternate route and avoid the traffic jam altogether? Now, she can.

Trichord, Inc. receives speed data from traffic sensors along major highways in Northern Virginia. This data is displayed in real-time in two user-friendly applications that can help your business save time and money - JamTrackerPlus™ and the Trichord Traffic Viewer™.

JamTrackerPlus™
Trichord's JamTrackerPlus™ offers "at-a-glance" access to real-time traffic speeds across Northern Virginia - meaning that your technician can find out (right now) how fast traffic is moving between the Braddock Road and I-95 on the Capital Beltway (right now). Data is updated every minute and is available in real-time on JamTrackerPlus™. Your technician can access this application as she's getting on the road, and she'll know right away if the current speed from one exit to another on I-495 is 10 mph or 50 mph.

JamTrackerPlus™ also allows the user to set speed thresholds that trigger audible or visual "speed alerts" - an indication that traffic is moving especially slowly or quickly along a specific road segment. With this function, your technician can be quickly alerted to a significant slow-down in traffic flow that could signal the presence of an incident. JamTrackerPlus™ will help her get where she needs to go on time, reducing frustration and lost productivity for her, and increasing on-time service calls and satisfied customers.

JamTrackerPlus™

JamTrackerPlus™ offers:

• Real-time traffic speeds, updated every minute.


• "At-a-glance" overview of traffic speeds, with route segments color-coded to reflect speed ranges.


• The ability to set speed thresholds that trigger audible or visual speed alerts that point out potential traffic problems.


• The ability to receive an alert when the number of traffic sensors reporting falls below a certain level.


• A “do not disturb” feature that temporarily disables audible or visual notifications, while continuing to record triggered alerts.
• Access from web browser.


• Unlimited access at economical pricing.

To download a brochure on JamTrackerPlus™, click here. To read more details on JamTrackerPlus™, and to see screenshots, click here.

The Trichord Traffic Viewer™
The Trichord Traffic Viewer™ gives you access to regional traffic speeds in real-time. The centerpiece of the software's user-friendly interface is a color-coded "congestion map" that provides "at-a-glance" access to traffic speeds. The map allows users to create customized "pre-set views," so that they may quickly zoom in on frequent "hot spots" (such as the Woodrow Wilson Bridge or the I-95 / I-495 interchange). Users may also enter, store, and update incident information and set speed alerts to call attention to serious changes in traffic flow. Users can calculate point-to-point travel times - from one exit to another along the Beltway, for example. Finally, the Trichord Traffic Viewer™ accesses historic traffic data, allowing the user to determine how the current travel time compares to the average over the most recent 30-day period.

The Trichord Traffic Viewer™

The Trichord Traffic Viewer™ provides the following benefits:

• Real-time traffic data, updated every minute


• Precise speed data and point-to-point travel times


• "At-a-glance" access to regional traffic speeds


• Customizable speed alerts that call attention to significant changes in traffic conditions.


• A Data archive, allowing comparison of current travel times to historical 30-day average.


• Software designed for "producer-reporter" relationship - producer can enter information and reporter can customize his or her application on the desktop


• Password-protected access facilitates cooperative traffic reporting - groups of stations or reporters can share information among themselves


• Availability of traffic data during periods of inclement weather - when many cameras cannot see what is happening


• Availability of traffic data during periods of heightened security - when flight restrictions prevent aircraft from flying over some locations
• Ideal for fleet operators who dispatch their vehicles from a central location

To download a 2-page brochure on the Trichord Traffic Viewer™, click here. For more details, and to see screenshots, click here.