Center offers Route 9 travel times online
In time for one of the busiest travel times of the year in the Pioneer Valley, Labor Day and move-in weekend, the campus’s Regional Traveler Information Center has installed a new traffic monitoring system on Route 9 to provide drivers with real-time information about traffic congestion and travel times.
The center’s color-coded “Travel Time” web feature at www.MassTraveler.com rates traffic conditions in green as “free-flowing,” in yellow for “light congestion,” and in red for “heavy congestion” on Routes 9 and 116. It also estimates how long it will take a car to travel along Route 9 between the Mountain Farms Mall in Hadley to Damon Road in Northampton based on current conditions and within the speed limit. These times are now being measured continuously in both directions using FastLane technology made available by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.
According to Kris Stetson, the center’s business manager, “This new feature should be especially helpful during move-in weekend here at the university, when there is so much traffic coming into Amherst. We’re trying our best to make this more efficient for people.” The travel time and congestion information can help drivers respond to problems by changing their route or their departure time, she adds.
The travel time feature has been operating on Route 116 between the Amherst-Sunderland town line and Routes 5 and 10 in South Deerfield for the past year, according to the traveler information center.
The regional travel center also has expanded the number of live traffic images viewable at one time on its web site. For example, viewers can choose to see all 16 webcam views at once, only those along Route 9, those along Route 116, those on the UMass Amherst campus, or the three downtown webcams located in Northampton, Orange and Athol. Information about MassHighway’s deployment of an advanced traffic management system on I-91 may also be obtained through the MassTraveler website.
The Regional Traveler Information Center is a joint venture of UMass and MassHighway in collaboration with the Regional Planning Agencies of Western Massachusetts and the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority. RTIC is managed by the UMass Transportation Center with operational and facility support from UMass Transit Services.
More Information
MassTraveler
August 31, 2009.
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