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Directions
In Traffic for Treo, all traffic problems are plotted on a map, which you can navigate by utilizing pan and zoom buttons with your smartphone’s stylus. The pan controls are four-way rather than eight-way. This can get irksome when you're trying to plot a diagonal route (say, Interstate 95 between Washington and Baltimore, where we tested the service).
You can get around this somewhat since clicking anywhere on the map will re-center it to that location. There are six levels of zoom available, but given the small and relatively low resolution display (on the Treo 600, in particulary), only the two highest zoom levels can display street names or route numbers.
Alerts
Traffic alerts—defined as an area where the traffic flowing at less than the posted speed limit—are plotted on the map as color-coded circles: red for the most severe and orange and yellow for moderate to minor traffic issues. There's also a light blue circle that seems to indicate a very minor slowdown.
When you zoom in close enough on an alert, the speed of traffic is shown within the circle, and it becomes pointed to denote the flow of traffic. Clicking on an alert icon will display such appropriate details as the name of the road, direction of travel, exit number, and speed.
In certain cases, the cause of the problem (construction, accident, etc.) may also be shown, but in our time using the service we found that to be pretty rare. Traffic data provided to the phone refreshes every 15 minutes by default, but you can change that to as frequently as every 5 minutes or as long as hourly (in five minute increments).
If you frequently travel through certain areas, you can create bookmarks to save specific locations (and zoom levels) on the map, and have the application default to one of your bookmarks when it starts up.
Information Interchange
The traffic information used by Traffic for Treo Smartphones is provided by MetroCommute, which employs various means to collect the information including official DOT reports, road sensors, videocameras, and eyewitness accounts. Because the technological traffic monitoring infrastructure isn't ubiquitous, you won't necessarily be able to spot every traffic choke point.
According to Palm, the service covers most primary, secondary, and tertiary roads, which should encompass almost all interstate and state highways as well as most local thoroughfares of significance.
There are some practical limitations to the service. For example, although the bookmark feature is handy, there's no way to easily focus only on the choke points on a defined route, like the way to work. In addition, while being able to pinpoint a slowdown on a road you plan to take is undoubtedly useful information, the software doesn't offer you any means (other than visually) to identify alternate routes around trouble.
Pricing & Availability
The cost of Traffic for Treo Smartphones is $4.99 for a single city, $7.99 for a pair of locales, and $14.99 for access to traffic data on all the cities monitored by the service. You can download the Traffic for Treo Smartphones software and get a 14-day trial of the service without having to sign up or pay anything up front.
At the moment, the list of cities for which traffic information is available is fairly short; it currently includes Atlanta, Baltimore/Washington, D.C., Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle.
Conclusion
In spite of some rough edges, Palm's Traffic for Treo can be quite useful, and if you have the right equipment and live in a supported city it is worth the $4.99 subscription fee. While the service won't always keep you from getting stuck in a traffic jam, it should help you avoid trouble spots more often than not, and it sure beats cursory traffic info you get from television or radio.
Review: Avoid Traffic Woes with Treo Service
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