Along with the social economic losses caused by the traffic congestion, most drivers have the needs to get "traffic congestion information with high accuracy at anytime and anywhere." Hitachi-original traffic information processing technology and congestion forecast technology, by making use of location information from vehicles for business use, such as taxis, along with the conventional VICS traffic information, provide traffic information with wider-area coverage and higher quality. The purpose of this traffic information is to improve users' convenience through services, such as delivery service to cellular phone users and PC service site users, information service to the businesses' fleet management, and information delivery service to navigation systems through telematics service center. For example, the route guidance allows you to avoid the traffic congestion and arrive at destination in a shorter period of time.
In the traffic information system that uses the floating car data(FCD), there is a problem that the areas, where the traffic information can be provided, are limited, because it is difficult to collect floating car data and produce the traffic information of the road on which the only few floating cars run per hour.
In this service, the stable traffic information supporting with wide area coverage is available by analyzing the historical statistics and the surrounding road condition, and complementing the sparse traffic data using "the imputation technology for traffic information*1" which Hitachi originally developed. Over 80% coverage*2 of major roads (national road, prefecture road, highway) in 23 cities of Tokyo metropolis area is realized, and the real-time traffic information of them are continuously provided.
In this service, by collecting the floating data from several thousands of running taxis every 30sec and processing them with high performance, the real time and highly accurate traffic information is provided every 5min.
The amount of floating car data collected by taxis is equivalent to those collected by about ten thousands of average family cars in terms of mileage.
Based on the accumulated historical floating car information and the feature space method*3 developed by Hitachi, we provide the traffic congestion information with high accuracy according to various traffic conditions such as a month, a day of the week, long-term holidays, and various events. Moreover, we can provide the times required for traveling different route with high accuracy by calculating the congestion level at right or left lanes from the floating car information.
The real time traffic congestion information and the traffic congestion forecast information are widely provided to not only drivers but also many users through mobile user site.
- Providing contents for cellular phone
- Providing traffic information (past, current, future)
- Notification of traffic situation forecast by email
- Route guidance
- Exchange information service among groups, etc.
- Providing contents for PC
- Drive route guidance
- Assist for Travel plan
- Sightseeing information search
- Hotel information search, etc.
In taxi dispatching management, the highly accurate estimated arrival time announcement can be operational with consideration of traffic congestion.
This allows you to improve the customer satisfaction through the fastest route guidance to the destination and the information of the more correct estimated arrival time when dispatching.
- Effective taxi arrangement and dispatching
- Announcement of more correct estimated arrival time
- Announcement of fastest route to the destination, and so on
The traffic information forecast service for fleet management is provided.
This allows you to improve service for customers by supporting the planning operation for delivery and drive management, providing the more correct estimated arrival time to the customer location, and providing the delay information efficiently.
- Effective support for delivery and drive management
- Announcement of the more correct estimated arrival time to the customer location
- Efficient announcement of the delay information due to traffic congestion and so on
The statistic traffic information forecast for car navigation is provided.
This allows the traffic information distribution area to expand.
Also, allows the service to improve by providing the present traffic information and the real time traffic information forecast for telematics service.
- Expansion of the traffic information distribution area
- Announcement of more correct present traffic information
- Route guidance with real time congestion forecast, etc.
| type | content | Travel time |
Degree of congestion | Length of congestion | |
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| past | Historical info. | Historical info.,stored during past years, by a unit of fiscal year |
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| Statistical info. | Info., processed historical info. by statistical prediction technology using sort of date, such as month, weekday, seasonal event, etc. | |
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| Statistical travel time info. among points of the major roads | Travel time, stored during past years, by a unit of fiscal year | |
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| current | Current status info. | Current Traffic info., processed by imputation technology | |
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| Travel time info. among points of the major roads | Travel time, between the start point and the end point of major roads | |
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| prediction | Real-time prediction info. (short term) |
Short term prediction info., processed by prediction technology using current info. and the statistical info. (in future of 30 min. to 2 hours) | |
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| Statistical prediction info. | Mid to long term prediction info., processed by the long term prediction technology using spatial correlation pattern method (in future of several hours to several years) | |
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