TomTom Traffic Stats to Change Statistics

The largest historic traffic database, TomTom calls its Traffic Stats project. And, with an estimated 3 trillion actual driven measurements and an extra 3.5 billion new measurements added each day, they might be right.

The information in the database has been obtained from TomTom users who have anonymously sent the company their usage statistics.

Traffic Stats is a huge database, as you already guessed, under construction ever since 2006. It includes traffic information for the entire road networks in Europe and North America and has been meant as a tool to “analyze actual driven historical travel times and speeds on any road or route over any calendar period and time of day.”

The database has been introduced during the Transportation Research Board annual meeting in Washington D.C. and is intended as a tool, a much faster one that those in use today, for governments and traffic consultants to keep themselves up to speed with all that happens on the roads.

Using the information in Traffic Stats, much more accurate statistics on average speed, travel time and the origins and destinations of traffic can be compiled.

According to TomTom, the data base can reply to a request from any interested party (it can only be used by registered users and organizations) within 24 hours, much faster than the current weeks-long waiting period.

“TomTom’s Traffic Stats database makes tailor-made reports available within one day and is unique in that it gathers the underlying information mainly from actual car movements,” said Maarten van Gool, managing director of TomTom Licensing.