Highways Agency offers local traffic news in real time
Agency adopts RSS to update motorists
Local news web sites will be able to provide real time traffic information following the adoption of RSS technology by the Highways Agency (HA).
Live traffic information from the agency’s National Traffic Control Centre can now be sent directly to web sites in real time to provide localised traffic information.
HA web editor Paul Knights says local web sites can receive a national feed of live incidents or one of 16 regionalised RSS feeds by road or region.
‘We have had many requests to provide other web sites with traffic information specific to a region in the UK or to a major road, such as the M25,’ he said.
‘This is easy to do using RSS. Essentially this technology allows information from one source to be simultaneously posted live via a feed to another site, in much the same way our traffic information is displayed on our site.’
Knights says web sites can publish the RSS feed as local traffic information ticker scrolling across the screen, similar to how national traffic information is displayed.
This is Local London, the online home of 40 local newspapers in London, is one of the first users of the service.
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