Frequently Asked Questions

Traffic England is a free website which is available to the public 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is run by the Highways Agency’s National Traffic Information Service. Highways Agency is responsible for most of the motorways and major A-roads in England.

The Highways Agency collects data about traffic flows, speed and travel times on the Highways Agency’s road network. This is done using sensors on the roads and in vehicles.

We also collect information from our traffic officer patrols and emergency services – for example this informs the estimated end-time of an incident that appears on the website. Roadworks data is taken from our maintenance schedules and we also consider the impact on traffic of weather using information from our weather stations.

This is then processed and published on Traffic England in different forms to help individuals and businesses plan their journeys.

The information is continually updated and is therefore the best information we have available of the current situation on the roads.

All data collected is anonymous and none of the sources identify the individual vehicle or road users. For this reason none of the sources of traffic data used by Traffic England can be used for speed enforcement.

Many companies and individuals use this service to:

• monitor regular commutes
• find the current congestion hotspots and avoid unnecessary queues and delays
• see how busy the roads are by viewing live CCTV
• check out traffic conditions on their route using the interactive map and motorway traffic flows
• identify the roadworks and whether or not they are causing delays
• plan business trips, deliveries and holidays by checking future roadworks, events and forecast traffic conditions that are expected to cause delays

Typical users include daily commuters, haulage companies, emergency services and tourists. If more people plan their journeys in this way, it can help reduce congestion for everyone.

The trunk road network is a system of strategic routes of national importance that caters for the movement of long distance traffic. The Highways Agency is responsible for the maintenance and operation of this network which includes most motorways (“M”) and some major “A” roads across England.

Around 960,000 customers use the service during an average month.

The original Traffic England service covers most motorways and major A-roads in England.

The motorways covered are:

M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M6, M6 Toll, M11, M18, M180, M181, M20, M23, M25, M26, M27, M271, M275, M32, M40, M42, M45, M48, M49, M50, M53, M54, M55, M56, M57, M58, M60, M602, M606, M61, M62, M621, M65, M66, M67 and M69.

The A-roads covered (in part or over the full length) are:

A1, A1(M), A1033, A1053, A1089, A11, A12, A120, A13, A14, A14 SPUR, A160, A168, A174, A180, A184, A19, A194(M), A2, A20, A2070, A21, A23, A24, A249, A259, A26, A260, A27, A3, A3(M), A30, A303, A308(M), A31, A3113, A34, A35, A36, A38, A4, A40, A404, A404(M), A405, A4097, A41, A4123, A414, A417, A419, A42, A421, A428, A43, A446, A449, A45, A452, A453, A458, A46, A460, A465, A47, A483, A49, A5, A50, A500, A5036, A5103, A5111, A5117, A5148, A52, A55, A550, A556, A56, A560, A57, A585, A590, A595, A6, A601(M), A61, A616, A627(M), A628, A63, A64, A66, A66(M), A663, A69 and A696.

In addition to roads shown above the new Traffic Map beta also covers limited sections of roads into Scotland and Wales, and some important local authority roads.

Additional roads on the new Traffic Map beta include the following:

A10, A1001, A1023, A1057, A113, A127, A14(M) A14, A162, A167, A167(M) A177, A1(M) A228, A229, A251, A28, A282, A296, A312, A316, A329(M), A38(M), A403, A4035, A4041, A406, A4114, A435, A454, A4540, A456, A4600, A461, A463,A491, A494, A5080, A5127, A516, A5300, A548, A57(M) A58, A58(M) A580, A6129, A614, A62, A627(M) A631, A638, A64(M) A643, A67, A68, A74(M) B1288, B197, B679, M1 SPUR, M23 SPUR, M25 SPUR, M4 SPUR and M74.

The Highways Agency is trialling the use of a new ‘beta’ version of its’ Traffic England road map information service. During the trial, we will assess whether the new beta road map provides quicker and more accurate information than the existing Traffic England map.

The beta version provides three different map views of the Agency’s road network. These show current and forecast (+12 hours) traffic conditions on England’s motorways and major A-roads. (Limited sections of roads into Scotland and Wales and some local authority roads of significant importance are also shown).

The three views of Traffic Map beta are:

• speed: current average traffic speed measured by roadside sensors, on-road cameras and sensors in vehicles
• journey impact: current average traffic speed as a percentage below the speed limit for that road
• speed vs forecast: current average traffic speed compared to typical conditions based on historical data. As forecast conditions include routine congestion this view will only show abnormal congestion to regular commuters.

As with Traffic England all data collected is anonymous and none of the sources identify the individual vehicle or road user. For this reason none of the new sources of traffic data used by Traffic England beta can be used for speed enforcement.

To help England’s motorways and major trunk roads run more freely, we are exploring ways to enhance the quality of information provided to road users and help with their journey planning. Many of these enhancements are based on customer feedback from the current Traffic England Service. We welcome feedback from our customers to help us improve our services.

The trial of Traffic Map beta is due to end in early 2013.

The original Traffic Map only uses a single-source of data – number plate recognition – to monitor journey times. If data is unavailable, for example when snow covers number plates, the road is coloured grey. If there are delays of between 15 and 30 minutes roads are coloured yellow whereas roads with delays of over 30 minutes are coloured in purple. Delays to journeys are provided regardless of the length of road.

Traffic Map beta uses data from multiple sources (fixed roadside sensors, number-plate recognition cameras and sensors in vehicles) that has been fused to provide a single, richer view of traffic speed. Data from multiple sources is also more resilient.

The process of fusing data happens continually, in real time. This new technology feeds into Traffic Map beta, providing a more accurate and timely view of the network conditions.

Sensors in vehicles include GPS devices fitted into vehicles or on mobile devices – such as those used by some freight and haulage companies.

• These sensors provide sources of traffic data that are not fixed to the roadside and provide information about the location, speed, time and direction of travel.
• All the devices have to opt-in to the system so no data is collected without permission.
• It is important to note that all of our traffic data sources are anonymous; so no personal or identifiable information is collected about you.

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Roads are coloured either blue for motorways or green for trunk roads if the road is clear. If there are delays of between 15 and 30 minutes they are coloured yellow and delays of over 30 minutes are coloured in purple. If we are unable to monitor the road because there is no equipment, it is faulty or there is disruption due to roadworks, the road is coloured grey.

Please note that on Traffic Map beta, roads with no data will be shown as the underlying road colour.

You can also find traffic information through:

• Highways Agency twitter services, our mobile app and mobile website.
• RSS feeds – these enable you to keep up-to-date with any incidents by providing a news feed direct to your computer or website
• local and national radio stations, who use information from the Highways Agency and elsewhere for their traffic news bulletins
• other services listed on the useful links section of this website

The following information is available on our motorways and major A roads:

• current and forecast average speeds
• delays, incidents, congestion, roadworks, adverse weather, future events and future roadworks
• speed compared to forecast speed for changes to regular journeys
• current and forecast journey disruptions
• traffic camera images and roadside messages

A traffic camera is a video camera positioned at strategic locations across the trunk road network to provide an immediate view of the traffic and any incidents. These cameras are managed by operators in the National Traffic Operations Centre (NTOC) and Regional Control Centre (RCC) control rooms. Images are centrally stored on the Agency network HANET and accessed by operators, emergency services and information services through the high speed dedicated National Road Telecommunication System (NRTS). Traffic England provides links to the latest camera images in the HANET database. Images are refreshed every 30 seconds and a new image can be obtained by clicking on the word ‘Refresh’ in the pop up box.

Occasionally an image will not be available because the image is not suitable for display on a public service such as Traffic England. When this occurs, the Camera Unavailable/Fault image will appear in the pop up box instead of the image. Only one image can be displayed at any one time to limit the load on HANET.

The camera locations are not the same as the monitoring equipment which provides speed information. Hence these two sources can sometimes appear to provide different information. This is because the traffic conditions visible on a traffic camera are much localised, whereas the speed information is averaged across larger stretches of the road network.

The traffic camera images remain the property of the Highways Agency. They are available to the public to allow accurate journey planning. Any abuse through excessive loading will affect the service performance and the Agency reserves the right to take action against such abuse.

Each time you use the website, there is a 20-minute session created and once this expires due to inactivity, you will be signed out and returned to the Home page.

Although Traffic Map beta has been designed with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) techniques in mind, it is difficult to support the various types of colour blindness in graphical form for all users. This will be addressed in future releases with other text-based information that complements the map.

Traffic Map beta is a standalone development page held within the Traffic England website. The data displayed is now fusing a range of traffic data together and while we
are developing the site anomalies can occur. During this developmental phase you are advised to make reference to our established Traffic England pages to verify the
information on the Traffic Map beta page. You can also verify this data by contacting our 24 hour information line on 0300 123 5000.

The information published on the Traffic England website regarding delays is collected by the National Traffic Information Centre from traffic monitoring equipment at the roadside. We use this data to build up rolling profiles of expected journey times for the network. When expected journey times are exceeded by 7.5 minutes we begin to monitor conditions and provide details of congestion. Any delay information displayed in Congestion icons indicates the increase to the expected journey time for a traffic monitoring section. When journey times return to profile we remove any indication of a delay.