11 Jan 2007
Transport Direct is upgrading the technology behind its live online travel service to cope with the increasing levels of traffic information it receives.
The web portal provides journey planning and travel data nationally, and allows people to plan journeys using different modes of transport.
Chief executive Nick Illsley says changes in the delivery and levels of information since the site’s launch in 2004 mean an upgrade is vital to ensure delivery of live travel news to people as quickly as possible.
‘When we launched, few buses were tracked in real time, but that has increased considerably,’ he said. ‘The technology we selected in 2003 was embryonic but now we need a new service.’
Transport Direct is seeking a provider to work alongside Atos Origin, which provides the bulk of the web site’s operations.
‘It will have to pull together disparate sources of information, such as highway, bus, rail and airline news, and send it to a bespoke database,’ said Illsley. ‘The web site is then updated every 10 minutes.’
The provider will also have to receive information delivered using new travel protocol experts group (TPEG) standards.
Illsley says Transport Direct is also looking to expand delivery of live travel news over technology such as mobile phones and digital TV.
‘We are looking for innovative new ways to deliver information to people on the move,’ he said.
‘We already have a service for mobile phones and digital TV, but the availability on devices and download speed is limited.’
Ovum analyst Graham Titterington says there is a much higher volume of travel information available, and IT services need to be robust to process information.
‘There has been a data explosion, particularly in the real-time tracking of buses using GPS,’ said Titterington.
Delivering information to mobile devices will be more challenging, as it is difficult to keep the volume of information appropriate to the bandwidth of devices, he says.
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