I'm just getting started working with TMC (Traffic Message Channel) data and I'd like to know how to use the location codes to get coordinate data for points. Is there a mapping somewhere I could use? I'm considering using traffic data from TTWN for the US.
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Could you provide more information, where is the original data (TMC), who makes it, and if possible the original format? I know that INRIX provides data through TMC's, but you need to buy a proprietary system to link the files to a map.– Daniel MillerCommented Aug 12, 2016 at 13:21
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Also, could you give an idea of the country?– Daniel MillerCommented Aug 15, 2016 at 13:25
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2 Answers
TMC Location lists are not that open, but some European countries offer them up to the public.
OSM them into OSM data, you could use OSM TMC or try to reverse engineer it.
As far as decoding goes: linux flavor
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Thanks Albert. What do you mean by "OSM them into OSM data, you could use OSM TMC"? I'm quite keen on converting TMC locations to an OSM format but so far all I've been able to discover for mapping the two seems limited to some European countries: wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/…– k-rCommented Aug 17, 2016 at 22:09
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sorry, osm can read/convert tmc, so i meant, use osm to convert tmc. however, as you pointed, the only data available is for the european counties i mentioned. not quite sure how i missed that. my bad.– albertCommented Aug 18, 2016 at 2:47
You need the Location Code List for the area you are interested in. However, there is a catch: there are free and commercial TMC services. The latter either keep their location tables secret or encrypt their data. In order to get the location tables or the decryption key, you would presumably have to sign a license agreement or NDA and pay a royalty, likely per user or device. To my knowledge, all US services fall into this category. Europe has a mix of both, and some location code lists are freely available.
If you are just curious and would like to see how it works, here are some pointers:
- RDS Surveyor—an RDS/RDBS parser application and library which can also handle TMC and decode TMC locations if you supply a location table. RDS input can come from a file or a hardware receiver.
- OSM TMC#Available datasets—list of public TMC location tables
- RDS Spy Logs is a repository of RDS data captures which you could use for analysis. RDS Surveyor can read them, though not all have TMC data.
