Site Provides Free Trip Planning Tools Including Charts & Reports That Show Current and Average Travel Times For Chicago-Area Roads
Chicago, IL (PRWEB) March 29, 2006 -- With construction season about to begin in the Chicago area, commuters are bracing for what might be one of the worst construction seasons in recent memory. This is mainly due to the $600 million Dan Ryan reconstruction project that goes into full swing on April 1, 2006.
The Dan Ryan expressway is the busiest in the Chicago area and one of the busiest in the nation. The work on the project will result in as many as eight of the 14 lanes being closed between April and October. These closures threaten to cause large delays for Ryan commuters, but Ryan commuters aren’t the only ones that should expect long delays. That is because delays on the Ryan tend to have a ripple effect onto connecting expressways such as the Kennedy, the Eisenhower, the Stevenson, and the Bishop Ford Freeway.
A free public service website that has been in operation since October of 2004 promises to help commuters get up to the minute travel time information on all of the Chicago area expressways throughout the Dan Ryan construction project. The web site, GCM Travel Stats (http://www.gcmtravelstats.com), is a travel planning resource that offers users information on current travel times, average and historical travel times, road speed conditions, and traffic congestion for all major roadways in the Chicago area.
The site offers the information in easy-to-read tables and user-friendly charts that give a quick visual understanding of the current traffic situation as it compares to historical conditions. Users have the ability to use the Quick Traffic Report feature or to drill down deeper with custom reports by day of week and by date range. The site even offers the ability to compare one travel route to another.
The raw data for the site comes courtesy of the GCM Priority Corridor, a cooperative of several state transportation departments, including the Illinois Department of Transportation. The raw data for Illinois comes from road sensors deployed by both IDOT and the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority. GCM Travel Stats collects and stores the raw data, performs calculations on the data in real time, and then presents the data to the public.
Brian J. Saville, the lead engineer at GCM Travel Stats, said that “while I believe many commuters would be best served by using public transportation, the fact remains that many commuters will still – either through necessity or personal preference – decide to drive despite the road work. For those commuters, this site offers valuable information that will hopefully allow them to make the best decisions about their commute.”
Saville sees a situation where commuters armed with this information may decide to alter their travel plans. “I think if a commuter knows that this information is available that they may use it on a daily basis and it may give them the power to say ‘Traffic is worse today than normal, perhaps I can take the train,’ or it might just cause them to leave earlier or later depending on what information they see on the site.”
“Ultimately,” Saville believes, “information is the key to ensuring that commuters spend less time sitting in traffic jams.”
The GCM Travel Stats web site began operation in October of 2004. The site is owned and operated by Road Stats, LLC, a Schaumburg, IL organization that provides travel planning information services to corporate and government clients. The GCM Travel Stats web site is made available to the public free of charge by Road Stats, LLC in cooperation with the Illinois Department of Transportation.
For more information on the GCM Travel Stats web site, contact Brian J. Saville at 847-909-5560.
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