Posted by Bud on December 28, 2009 at 14:35:10:
Traffic reports a friendly, informed voice for drivers
TRAFFIC ON THE EIGHTS | Regular reports keep drivers posted, remind them they're 'not alone'
December 28, 2009
BY MARY WISNIEWSKI Staff Reporter
It's holiday time at Shadow Traffic's Chicago office. Staffers have brought in cookies and chocolate cream pie to crowd the one table that isn't covered with computers, police scanners and phones.
But Bart Shore, the voice of WBBM-AM (780) morning traffic, doesn't have time to nibble or get caught in long party conversations. Every 10 minutes, he has to be in a closet of a studio, telling listeners what's on the roads.
He sits at the mike and checks the computer screen, getting ready to summarize dozens of lines of late-morning traffic information and read a HoneyBaked Ham commercial in 1 minute, 25 seconds.
In the newsroom, a siren goes off, sounding an alert -- it's so noisy, the sound leaks into the booth. Shore opens the booth door and shouts, "Turn that thing down!"
Shore then tells reporter Dan Frank, "A guy called in about an accident in Bensenville, but I can't find the address on the map. Call Bensenville police and see what they know." Shore ducks back into the studio, as the seconds tick down to the next "Traffic on the Eights."
"Still pretty light on the area expressways," Shore tells listeners in a mellow baritone, trained from years as a top-40 DJ. He ticks off the roads in a pre-set order -- the Edens, the Kennedy, the Eisenhower, the Stevenson, the Dan Ryan. He warns of debris from an earlier accident on the Bishop Ford, cues in Mike Nygaard flying in a Cessna over the scene, and finishes with ham.
"I've been doing this since 5 a.m. -- every 10 minutes -- it can drive you nuts," Shore jokes. He gets the lowdown on that Bensenville accident -- turns out it was in Addison. But now it has been confirmed, and it can go into the next report.
In the 14 years he has been doing traffic for WBBM, Shore says he has seen one constant -- traffic gets worse and worse in the country's third-most-congested urban area.
"Everyone's out in the afternoons, now," Shore says. "When I was a kid, you only had inbound in the morning and outbound in the afternoon."
Besides Shadow Traffic other competitors for road-weary commuters are Navteq, which specializes in providing digital maps for in-vehicle, portable and wireless technology, and Clear Channel's Total Traffic Network, which also delivers traffic data via in-car and portable navigation systems. Each service provides traffic reporting for a variety of broadcast outlets.
Besides WBBM, Chicago stations that use Shadow Traffic include WGN, WXRT, US99. The Chicago office also covers stations in Milwaukee, Indianapolis and St. Louis.
Total Traffic's one TV and 25 radio stations in the area include WLS-AM and WVON.
Navteq's stations include Chicago Public Radio and WLS-Channel 7. Another Navteq outlet is the Web site traffic.com.
The traffic services use many of the same tools for compiling traffic information, including data from the Illinois Department of Transportation's expressway sensors, video surveillance cameras, police scanners and reports from the Illinois Tollway. Total Traffic, for example, boasts 20 video cameras on the expressways and tollways. Navteq has its own sensors on the tollways and uses information gathered from a million vehicles with GPS systems.
Shadow Traffic uses aircraft -- helicopter and airplane -- and its "traffic tip line."
"People are programmed to call us when stuff happens," says Shore. "They want to be a part of it."
Navteq, based in Chicago, got into the traffic reporting business to enhance its mapping and navigation service -- it wasn't enough to tell people how to get where they were going. Navteq wanted to say how long it would take to get there and to provide alternative routes.
"By adding traffic information into the map, you create a dynamic route," said John MacLeod, executive vice president of Navteq Services. "You manage the expectation."
WBBM's Joe Collins, who takes over in the afternoons, says despite all the sources of traffic information, traffic reporting can't be perfect because the data are always changing. A report may say it's 25 minutes from Montrose to the Hubbard Street Tunnel -- but an accident can change that in a second.
"You can't take it for gospel truth. It's an estimate," said Collins. "But there's a big difference between 45 minutes and and an hour and 15. You want to get a general idea."
And even though he can't change traffic for listeners, a traffic reporter can at least let them know they're not alone.
"I'm a friendly voice telling them the same thing they already know, usually," said Shore. "You're going to hear it's really bad, don't go that way, go this way."