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Traffic channels gone?

This story popped up the same day that CBS Radio announced it was changing its traffic service from Total Traffic to Radiate. My recollection was that Sirius also got its traffic from Total, which is owned by iHeart. Traffic is hard to monetize when you don't have actual ratings. It was probably an huge expense that had minimal value in terms of what Sirius has become. It may have been a good idea 15 years ago when they started, and has outlived its usefulness. They can better utilize the channel space for another dedicated music channel. Traffic has become one of those things that is better reported by more localized services rather than a national company.
 
People with SiriusXM in their cars are likely to have newer cars with all the in-dash electronic goodies. That includes GPS, which can provide instant traffic alerts customized for your route. Yes, traffic services are obsolete. That's why traffic services keep falling by the wayside. Metro acquired Shadow. Then Total acquired Metro/Shadow from Westwood. Traffic Pulse folded and some of their people tried to start Radiate from the remains. Operations keep getting consolidated, too, with the result that information is less timely and less accurate. Instead of local operations in each city with vehicles on the road and choppers in the air, traffic reports come from out of town, based on electronic monitors (which don't always work) and highway department traffic cams (when available) and put together by minimum wage drones who don't know the local area.
 
Oscar Madison said:
People with SiriusXM in their cars are likely to have newer cars with all the in-dash electronic goodies.
Click to expand...

All of that is great, but people driving at 80 miles an hour don't want to take their eyes off the road so they can look at the traffic map. People are also cheap and lazy. They want to get the traffic as part of the overall content package they're listening to, and they don't want to pay extra for it. That means listening to radio traffic reports included in regular programming. So far the engineers haven't figured out how to do that yet.
 
TheBigA said:
All of that is great, but people driving at 80 miles an hour don't want to take their eyes off the road so they can look at the traffic map. People are also cheap and lazy. They want to get the traffic as part of the overall content package they're listening to, and they don't want to pay extra for it. That means listening to radio traffic reports included in regular programming. So far the engineers haven't figured out how to do that yet.
Click to expand...

Wrong! In your rush to disagree you forget that GPS traffic apps talk to you. They give you traffic alerts and directions. And you don't pay extra. Google Maps, for one, is free. And if you don't have a new car with full in-dash electronics, you can get it through your smartphone. And you don't have to wait 10 minutes for the 1's or 2's or 8's .... by which time you aren't going 80, you're standing still. You get the alert as soon as it comes in. And it breaks in to whatever else you are listening to. You really should find out about 21st technology.

It's amazing how you are able to come up with these generalizations that apply to whole masses of people.
 
Oscar Madison said:
Wrong! In your rush to disagree you forget that GPS traffic apps talk to you.
Click to expand...

Do you understand the difference between push and pull media?

I don't have to generalize. Just go to the SiriusXM Twitter site and read all the complaints from users who are upset that their traffic service is gone. Obviously lots of people depend on old style traffic reports. Just like lots of people still use plain old telephone service. It may not be the hot new thing, but lots of people still use them. Just like you still read print newspapers.
 
Useless to me, as Hartford/New Haven is not big enough -- nor does it have regular traffic problems -- to matter to SXM. What gets me, though, is the existence of a "dead zone" between the two cities on I-91 that no traffic service ever covers. Case in point: I spent nearly four hours in a virtual parking lot between exits 15 and 16 northbound while a multi-vehicle accident, fire, fuel spill, etc. was taken care of. I don't have GPS or even a smart phone, just AM, FM and Sirius XM. After 30 minutes of sitting and waiting, I checked WTIC Hartford to see what was going on. No luck: I-91 is of interest to whatever outsourced traffic service it uses only as far south as Exit 24. OK, WELI New Haven next. Nope. I-94 ceases to exist for that station's traffic service north of Exit 10. Fiinally, two hours into the ordeal -- on a Friday afternoon/evening, mind you (4 to 8 p.m.), WTIC found out about the situation and worked a mention into the top-of-the-hour news break. The traffic reports still didn't mention it. As for WELI, I have no idea whether its outsourced news and traffic services ever found out. I-91 between the two cities only runs about 40 miles and it is quite busy during the rush hours. Apparently, though, terrestrial radio doesn't consider coverage of major traffic events along the entire stretch a priority.
 
Oscar Madison said:
Wrong! In your rush to disagree you forget that GPS traffic apps talk to you. They give you traffic alerts and directions. And you don't pay extra. Google Maps, for one, is free. And if you don't have a new car with full in-dash electronics, you can get it through your smartphone. And you don't have to wait 10 minutes for the 1's or 2's or 8's .... by which time you aren't going 80, you're standing still. You get the alert as soon as it comes in. And it breaks in to whatever else you are listening to. You really should find out about 21st technology.
Click to expand...

My experience with interactive traffic sources like Waze simply move the congestion, like lemmings, from one place to another. Because Waze is crowd sourced, if a "better" route appears, all the users all go to that route at the same time, and generally create worse issues. Waze was great until it started trending in a huge manner.

Similarly, I find that my GPS assisted traffic system in my car will recommend alternate routes that are not capable of carrying the diverted traffic, making the drive longer and not helping at all.

I have a a two and a half hour commute each way when I have to "go to the office" and there are some areas where getting off the freeway for any reason puts me in an area where I do not want to be.

So in general, whether you get the data from crowdsourcing or data sensors, traffic reports are, today, really only useful when there is a total road closure which gives no alternative to drivers on the route. Otherwise, the alternatives are generally worse than the preferred route.

I did "my" market's only airborne traffic many years ago in a Top 15 market. It was costly, and the metro area had few true alternate routes. Listeners, when surveyed a few months into the effort, said that being told traffic was slow when traffic was always slow was frustrating and annoying. We quit doing traffic reports. The ratings went up.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Listeners, when surveyed a few months into the effort, said that being told traffic was slow when traffic was always slow was frustrating and annoying. We quit doing traffic reports. The ratings went up.
Click to expand...

I think that's correct. Traffic reports aren't strictly done for the benefit of people stuck in traffic. They're done because they make money. They don't make money on Sirius, because they aren't a rated service. So traffic reports have no value.

I was stuck in a major jam on Friday. I notice the commercial radio stations keep their traffic reports very short, because of what you say. Short reports mean less information. I switched to a non-commercial station, where the report went longer. They listed every interstate in the area, and frankly, I missed the one I wanted to hear because there was too much information. So neither was useful to me.
 
Here in the DC area, I sometimes use the GPS traffic information, but as David said, typically don't bail off onto other routes because they can't handle the volume of all the traffic also following their GPS traffic info. WTOP does a frequent, yet abbreviated traffic report that usually covers the Beltways and bridges in a prescribed order. It's almost like during commuting times they can just prerecord the traffic and play it back on the 8's. There have been many occasions where I've sat in miles of crawl on I-95, yet WTOP reported no delays.

WAZE crowd-sourced traffic is useful to see there is something ahead, but most times the information about delays or alternative routes are inaccurate. I recently sat in a five mile backup on I-95 in North Carolina where WAZE contributors were obviously goofing off, posting ridiculous comments about bodies all over the highway, zombie apocalypse, no police on site, etc.

The local NPR affiliate, WAMU used to have the most accurate and comprehensive traffic reports, but dropped them completely a year ago when they had a management change.

I tried using the SiriusXM traffic reports a few times, but it seemed like as time went on information wasn't updated frequently enough. It was always like listening to the local weather via NOAA Weather Radio. One needs to wait though all the other coastal reports, river levels, temperature history, blah-blah, before getting to the local forecast.
 
Many new receivers, such as the Onyx+, allow users to set them so that as soon as their chosen city report comes on, they will switch from whatever channel they are on to that traffic & weather channel and then maybe return to the previous channel.
It would be nice if SiriusXM were allowed to offer local content on their terrestrial repeaters.
 
Channels 132-138 have returned.
 
I don't use it much, but I went to the NY Traffic channel recently and found it preempted by a sporting event! Useless.

It's bad enough terrestrial stations consider it acceptable to piss off their regular listeners (and yes, I get the economics) but a supposed 24/7 service should be available 24/7. Otherwise they're just training users to not depend on it.
 
There have been changes. 132 had had Bos., Philly, Atl and Pitt. but now has Boston, Philly, and Washington DC--and it's moved to 134. 132 now has Glenn Beck and Dave Ramsey and who knows what else (Beck moved from Patriot)

According to the XM site (not sure about Sirius):
133 New York
134 Boston/Philadelphia/Washington DC
135 Chicago/Detroit/Dallas-Ft. Worth
136 Los Angeles
 
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