Traffic message channel

TMC allows silent delivery of dynamic information suitable for reproduction or display in the user's language without interrupting audio broadcast services.

Detailed technical proposals for an RDS-TMC broadcasting protocol were first developed in the European Community's DRIVE programme[3] research project RDS-ALERT, a partnership of the BBC, Philips, Blaupunkt, TRRL and CCETT led by Castle Rock Consultants (CRC).

[4] The main goal of the project was to develop and build consensus upon a draft standard for broadcasting RDS-TMC traffic messages in densely coded digital form.

[5] An initial proposal for defining RDS-TMC data fields had been made to the European Conference of Ministers of Transport (ECMT) in Madrid, based on a scheme developed by CCETT and Philips in the Eureka-sponsored CARMINAT research project.

A second proposal, by Bosch-Blaupunkt and the German Road Research Institute BASt, sought to use just a single RDS Group per traffic message.

In conjunction with the revised location codes, which saved 17 of the 33 bits previously assigned, this allowed the great majority of traffic messages to be broadcast using a single TMC data sequence.

[9] The work continued with a larger consortium including Volvo and Ford Motor Company in the European Commission's DRIVE II project ATT-ALERT.

The message contains a list of up to 2048 event phrases defined by 11 binary bits (of which 1402 were in use as of 2007) that can be translated by the receiver into the user's language.

Those location tables are integrated in the maps provided by in-vehicle navigation system companies such as HERE Technologies and TomTom and by vehicle manufacturers such as Volvo.

The limited precision can make a significant difference as to how navigation devices interpret the incident, potentially leading to an occasional poor route choice.

The presentation, entitled "Unusual Car Navigation Tricks", raised the point that RDS-TMC is a wireless cleartext protocol and showed how to build a receiver and transmitter with inexpensive electronics capable of injecting false and potentially dangerous messages.

[22] Official government advice was to ignore these messages, local police services admitted that locating the source of the transmissions was going to be difficult and that – even though clearly communication laws were broken – arrests or convictions were unlikely.

With European Commission funding, the BBC, Transport Research Laboratory and CCETT came together in a team led by Castle Rock Consultants to develop the standard.

The service is available on GPS navigation systems including Navman, Mio, Uniden, iPhone (Navigon & Sygic), Eclipse, Pioneer, Alpine and Clarion.

[31] SUNA is currently the only source of comprehensive, metropolitan congestion monitoring content in Australia – proprietary technology interfaces to traffic light control systems.

It combines all Belgian sources from the Flemish, Walloon and Brussels government, police stations, a national Floating Car Data system based on GPS positions from vehicles and the Touring Mobilis call center.

The service is provided by TrafficNav,[37] a Budapest based traffic information company in cooperation with the broadcast hardware manufacturer Kvarta.

The content is provided by ddg Gesellschaft für Verkehrsdaten mbh, a wholly owned subsidiary of T-Systems Traffic GmbH.

In Poland, service is available in PND devices: Garmin, Mio and Becker as well as in car embedded navigations used by Toyota, Volvo and Ford.

The service is built on more than 100 different sources, processed automatically (Floating Car Data) or manually by operators in Mediamobile Traffic Information Centre based in Warsaw.

TraficOK was planned to be available in Bucharest, Ploiești, Pitești, Constanța, Brașov, Cluj-Napoca, Târgu Mureș, Oradea, Arad, Timișoara, Iași and Bacău.

Information consists of current traffic situation provided by CE-Traffic a.s and is available exclusively for owners of Garmin navigation devices.

[62] In partnership with INRIX,[63] Altech Netstar broadcasts their Premium Traffic Service throughout Gauteng, Kwa-Zulu Natal and Western Cape Peninsula.

1: HERE (previously NAVTEQ) has the broadest RDS-TMC service in Turkey, covering the largest 11 cities in the country: Istanbul, Ankara, Adana, Bursa, Mersin, Izmir, Eskisehir, Antalya, Konya, Kayseri and Gaziantep.

ITIS provides traffic data on RDS-TMC to major automotive companies (BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, Ford, Renault, Jaguar Land Rover and others).

This system used road-side infrastructure to measure vehicle travel time between sensors placed a few miles apart, and used number plate recognition technology.

Teletrac Navman provided traffic data on RDS-TMC to major automotive OEM brands including VW, Audi, Skoda, Mazda, Chrysler, Honda, Seat and Vauxhall.

Teletrac Navman also supplies the Department for Transport with historical traffic data for modelling purposes which is used by central and local governments and their sub-contractors when analyzing road network improvement opportunities.

The TomTom RDS-TMC Traffic Receiver acquires information through an FM signal broadcast by Clear Channel's regional providers.

In addition to these after-market services, six major motor manufacturers offer RDS-TMC as standard in their U.S. vehicles, including Volvo and BMW.