IQroutes has competition

[gatorguy]

From Navteq so take it as you will:

Traffic Patterns Info

? Current Coverage: USA, Canada, Puerto Rico, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy

? Coverage to be Added in Q4/09: Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria, Switzerland

? Data Referenced to: TMC Location Codes


? File Format: .CSV

Recent Traffic Patterns North America Performance Results

? Calculates an alternate route for 1 out of every 4 trips taken

? Saves a driver an average of 29 hours per year in metro areas

? Reduces annual traveler delay by 46% in Los Angeles, 22% in Toronto, 35% in San Francisco, 61% in New York, and 65% in Chicago

 

[doctormstein1]

FWIW. Meant to post this yesterday and got sidetracked.

Seattle-based traffic provider INRIX is announcing today the availability of its historical traffic speed database for Europe. Designed for use in routing and travel time applications, encompasses accurate speed information for over 420,000 kilometers across roadway networks in Germany, France, the U.K., Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxemburg.

?Expanded coverage for additional countries and roads across Western Europe will be available soon?, added INRIX.

?The scale of our crowd-sourced network of speed data from GPS-enabled commercial and consumer vehicles and devices, as well as our partnerships across Europe, is driving the availability of new INRIX traffic services such as our historical traffic speeds product,? said Hans-Hendrik Puvogel, general manager of INRIX Europe.

TomTom's IQR covers 15 million kilometers of roads in Europe, according to TomTom. Based simply on past press releases and claims, I might take that figure with a grain of salt, but in any case they currently have a significant lead. But here's something to consider. Basing historical travel speeds on only other TomTom devices is not as accurate as the data augmented by highway sensors, over-the-road vehicles, anonymous cell and other public sources, Inrix appears to have data sources that TomTom does not, so going forward Inrix historical traffic speeds might be more accurate. Whether it's anything significant might be debatable. Really, what matter is it if your computed route is 1 or 2 minutes different from the actual drive, or that a 2% faster route was available?

Your right it basically a waiting game. But since I love tomtom I hope they will always be ahead of everyone