Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Canadian Driving Made Easy-ier: Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa now Offers GPS Traffic Information

A couple of my colleagues were very boastful recently after we all headed to an off site location and they got there before me after leaving a full 10 minutes later than my group did. The advent of commercial GPS navigation systems marked a most significant advance in driving. In recent weeks the added feature of real time traffic update for drivers has been made available to three major Canadian cities on east coast.

Drivers in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa are now accessing the Clear Channel’s Total Traffic Network which began broadcasting RDS-TMC data to Canada in early September. With this service GPS devices can access traffic information by way of a RDS-TMC receiver. The receiver accesses traffic information from FM radio broadcasts and passes this to the Garmin, TomTom or Mio GPS models that supports the system. GPS users are then notified about traffic status in the city due to traffic construction or accidents and could optionally provide alternate routes if required.

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