ITS Texas Award Citations - 2007 Annual Meeting

Houston TranStar

Houston TranStar is providing a new service in 2007: Free, personalized e-mail alerts that notify users of travel times on Houston area freeways. This is in addition to TranStar's existing notices of traffic incidents along selected routes.

The new travel time notices tell subscribers how long it will take to get from Point A to Point B (or Point A to C, D, or however many segments along the road subscribers elect to receive). In fact, travelers can set up alerts for several routes, allowing them to choose the best routes for their daily commutes.

Houston TranStar sends travel time alerts to any device capable of receiving e-mail or text messages, including personal computers, cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs such as BlackBerrys) and text pagers. The drive time data is re-calculated every minute by Houston TranStar.

Subscribers tailor the information they want by selecting days of the week and time periods during the day. Then they choose the direction of traffic, the segment or segments of roadway or roadways, and how frequently they want to be notified. Travelers can receive drive time updates either once daily or at 15- or 30-minute intervals during a chosen time (or times) of day.

For example, to compare drive times, a driver may subscribe to notifications every 15 minutes on both the I-10 Katy Freeway and Westpark Tollway beginning at 4:00 - 5:30 p.m. from Monday-Friday to determine which route would be fastest to get home.

Giving drivers more information to choose the fastest way to reach their destinations reduces congestion and decreases fuel consumption along heavily traveled roadways.

Houston TranStar is the only entity in the State of Texas, and one of very few in the world, to offer this unique service, provided at no cost to its region's travelers.