Impact of images from traffic cameras on journey planning

The Highways Agency is making available images from its traffic cameras under licence to organisations that provide traffic information to the public, to enable better journey planning. This paper describes the results of market research with the users of one particular service to evaluate the influence of providing public access to traffic camera images. Subscribers to the service want to be better informed about traffic conditions and are prepared to pay for that information. The results show that real-time traffic camera images, though rarely used in isolation from other sources of traffic information, provide an additional secondary level of detail which enables drivers to make better informed and timely decisions about their route choice and departure time.