THE SWIFT TRAFFIC WORKSTATION

This paper describes a Traffic WorkStation (TWS) developed for the Seattle Wide-area Information for Travelers (SWIFT) Field Operational Test (FOT) now being implemented in Seattle, Washington. The TWS is designed to provide a convenient means to both manually and automatically enter real-time traveler information from a variety of digital and analog sources, and to convert that information into standardized, compressed, geocoded, digital formats for transmission over a wireless communications system for receipt and display by portable and mobile devices. While the specific implementation described here is for SWIFT, the TWS design can be readily adapted to a wide variety of wireless and wired communications systems serving many types of portable, mobile, and on-line traveler information systems, services, and devices.