Current Travelwise Status:

For clarity's sake, I would like to point out that none of the data used for mapping at Nottingham Travelwise has been derived from any Ordnance Survey dataset. Locations have been calculated using freely available Tele Atlas-based (Google Map) tools.

Four new traffic cameras have come online today, and are available through Travelwise:
B682 Nottingham Rd/Haydn Rd,
A6514 Valley Rd/B682 Nottingham Rd,
A610 Alfreton Rd/Bentinck Rd,
A612 Colwick Loop Rd/Mile End Rd.
** Motorists please take note: these are also used as part of Nottingham City Council's ongoing bus lane enforcement programme.

A new system has been rolled out today, enabling the placement of Nottingham City's VMS signs on Travelwise. These are updated in real time, and contain both the multi-row signs on the A611 and Fletcher Gate, and the car park VMS system ("SPACES, FULL").

We have today rolled out a new feature - congestion data from Mansfield. This uses data from the loop and overhead detectors you see at each set of traffic signals, rather than the custom loops installed in Nottingham City. We shall be evaluating the performance of this system relative to the existing setup in Nottingham, and hope that you find it useful.
You may also notice that cameras 47 and 48 in mansfield show 'no camera'. This is because they are currently dial-up ISDN units, which are in the process of being replaced. As soon as they are, you will see the images here on Travelwise.

Firstly, the good news - we have some new cameras for those of you in the County. Cameras 60 and 61 are based in the centre of Retford and will aid us in contolling signal timings at two critical junctions.
Secondly, you might have noticed that over the August Bank Holiday we had 48 hours of unscheduled downtime. This was due to our hardware firewall's power supply exploding. We're working on systems to negate the impact such a failure would have in future.

It occurs to me that I haven't mentioned what is possibly the coolest part of the site: Nottingham Travelwise for Mobile. This is designed to detect when you're using a mobile browser and use the version appropriate to you; therefore you only need type in http://www.itsnottingham.info/ to connect. This has been tested on a variety of mobile hardware, however if you run into trouble please let us know.
The system uses a simple, high-contrast textual layout (built upon our accessibility site), and offers links to Google Maps for those of you with unlimited data plans. Obviously the standard pages are designed to be as small as possible: parking information weighs in at 6k, roadworks at 15k and our new Highways Agency incidents at 7k. These are, of course, subject to a degree of variation.
So - next time you're on a journey and want to know if the trunk roads are blocked, consider our Highways Agency delays page; next time you're wondering where to park have a look at our realtime parking information - you might find it saves some time!

You may well have noticed the addition of camera 57, junction of Bye Pass Road and Attenborough Road. We are still having issues with camera 40 at Saxondale roundabout, whereby the physical hardware needs replacement. This process is hitting logistical problems.

Trials are underway regarding the transformation of our existing map data to KML. This will allow for presentation of our existing data on Google Earth. View a teaser here, which includes our brand new Highways Agency data. Next in line are the Parking and Congestion datasets.

There have been a few changes under the surface of Travelwise recently. Firstly, there is a concerted move toward simplifying the pages at they are downloaded. Secondly, our network backbone has been upgraded - this should be reflected in faster load times.

Today saw rollout of the first large-scale overhaul of our mapping system since January. This is now viewport-based (i.e. fits to your screen regardless of size), and contains data sourced from the Highways Agency web services. Click on the HA logo on the new mapping page for details!

You may also notice that our news ticker has been calmed down slightly on the map page. This is due to be rolled out to the whole site in the next few days; during testing on one of my base machines (for reference, a G3 400MHz iMac running OS 10.4), the current javascript ticker was rendering some pages unusable.

A current area of experiment is in the visualisation of journey time data. Comment on the current version would be much appreciated. It just so happens that the day this becomes a viable public beta, our two traffic cameras on this route fail.

The script behind our Google Map has been largely rewritten; this is to reduce the amount of processing done at client-side. In short, it should work a little faster for you.

The news ticker code has been rewritten, and is the first update in a week of code optimisation. This should result in less resources used at the browser end. Also, over the last month there was a minor update to the mapping system's congestion sidebar as a result of user feedback.

It has just come to my attention that a recent API update from Google has caused popup windows on the map to be oversized (in Microsoft Internet Explorer). A fix is on the way, apologies for this inconvenience in the interim.

As it stands we're working towards new information for the live map. This is being sourced in realtime from the National Traffic Control Centre in Birmingham, and as a test we are looking at matrix and variable message signs. If you've been keeping up with the development site you'll have noticed one or two new icons appearing on the map; this is the bleeding edge of Travelwise development so please expect issues.

If you'd like to see the direction in which Nottingham Travelwise is moving, please visit the development pages. As ever, your comments on this are appreciated.

Fixed a problem which caused the feedback system not to function correctly over the last few days. Apologies to users who had been trying to get in touch.

Updated Google Maps script in place. We'd like feedback on how intuitive you find the new 'spring back' action upon close of infowindow. The site is also undergoing a revision to certain graphical elements.

As it stands the refresh behaviour of the CCTV pages is now more consistent (i.e. selected view persists upon page refresh). This refresh can also now be cancelled in the same manner as our realtime map. There have also been efficiency impovements which shorten load time for this resource.

Thank you all for your feedback - we shall be looking into addressing some of the issues you have identified, and we would appreciate you continuing to help us in this way!
As it stands, the most requested work areas are:

• Faster loading time
• More predictable refresh behaviour
• Improvement in the clarity of list views

Updates will arrive in the next week, so please bear with us in this respect.

We are currently experimenting with different route planners and data providers. To test these features, go to our live map and select 'directions' from an info window belonging to a car park, or landmark.