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Personalized Traffic Reports Ease Commuting Experience For Subscribers
Burlington, Mass. August 17, 2004
Maptuit Corporation and Westwood One (NYSE: WON) today announced washingtonpost.com has licensed their RealTraffic™ web service. The washingtonpost.com uses RealTraffic to help increase customer loyalty on its web portal by providing its subscribers with a personalized traffic content and alert service.
"The U.S. Department of Transportation reports that Americans spend collectively over 500 million hours per week in their car," said Jeff Papows, CEO for Maptuit. "The end result is that these drivers need a service to help them make their daily commute as efficient as possible. RealTraffic is delivering this service to drivers with our online traffic reports and alerts."
"With RealTraffic, we provide personalized traffic reports that alert subscribers when traffic conditions occur that will affect their commute or travels," said Howard Parnell, Editor of washingtonpost.com. "We then can offer alternate directions to help them get to where they need to go."
Maptuit and Westwood One have developed the RealTraffic service by leveraging the core strengths of both companies. Built on Maptuit's sophisticated database of the North American road network, along with Westwood One's up-to-date traffic information, RealTraffic offers personalized traffic content to ease the driving experience for commuters, travelers, and professional drivers. With street-level directions integrated with traffic incident information, RealTraffic also allows drivers to choose alternate routes and avoid problem traffic thereby making the commuting experience less painful. Together, Maptuit and Westwood One have developed RealTraffic as a "must have" traffic service to ease the commuting experience and aid in trip planning for the professional driver.
"Together with Maptuit, we are providing washingtonpost.com with a state-of-the-art online traffic reporting service that is of great value to their customers," stated Richard Marks, SVP, Westwood One. "By offering RealTraffic, many of washingtonpost.com's subscribers are visiting their web portal on a daily basis to view traffic conditions that might affect their commute and to receive alternate routes and directions to help them make the most of their drive."
By using RealTraffic, commuters who subscribe to the service are able to set up personalized accounts where they can enter locations such as "work" and "home", as well as define trips between them such as "home to the gym on weekdays at 7:30AM", or "work to home, weekdays between 5:30PM and 7PM". At the specified time intervals, the RealTraffic service checks each trip for traffic incidents and notifies the commuter of any traffic advisory that will impact their trip using a SMS (Short Message Service) or e-mail alert. Using the website, the commuter will have the ability to request an alternate route that avoids congestion.
About Westwood One
Westwood One (NYSE: WON) provides over 150 news, sports, music, talk, entertainment programs, features, live events and 24/7 Formats. Through its subsidiaries, Metro Networks/Shadow Broadcast Services, Westwood One provides local content to the radio and TV industries including news, sports, weather, traffic, video news services and other information. SmartRoute Systems manages traffic information centers for state and local departments of transportation, and markets traffic and travel content to wireless, Internet, in- vehicle navigation systems and voice portal customers. Westwood One serves more than 7,700 radio stations. Westwood One is managed by Infinity Broadcasting Corporation. For more information visit www.westwoodone.com.
About Maptuit Corporation
Founded in 1999, Maptuit Corporation provides trucking, tracking and traffic services for the transportation and consumer markets. With Maptuit's advanced web services and patented technology, companies benefit from the ability to easily look up addresses, create maps, perform proximity searches, generate optimized routes and provide directions. For more information please visit www.maptuit.com.
Media contact: Noreen Vincent, Maptuit Corporation, 781.685.4693
(Noreen.Vincent@maptuit.com)
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