TfL adds camera feeds to live travel news

Developers and London's drivers can find out where congestion is across the capital thanks to real-time information made available by Transport for London on its website and a new twitter feed.

The live traffic news website gives people access to the feeds from over 170 cameras across London.

The live traffic news update, announced on Friday, knits the feeds from 170 traffic cameras across London and data from TfL's Surface Transport Traffic Operations Centre into a map (pictured) and twitter account that drivers can access to identify travel hotspots.

"The live traffic disruption feed contains all the information about the location, nature, impact and timing and nature of disruptions, which is where we get the information for the new Twitter feed from," a TfL spokesperson told ZDNet UK. "The idea behind the map on the website is that this is our interpretation of how we see [all the feeds] looking."

Developers can register to get access to the data by visiting the TFL Developers' Area.

Available feeds include the camera images and a beta of the Journey Planner API, which lets developers query TFL's Journey Planner and receive responses as XML.

The data is being made available to software and application developers via several TfL-administered feeds and APIs under the organisation's open data policy.

The map allows drivers to find out where incidents have occurred that cause either a 'serious' or 'moderate' traffic impact. They can also access the feeds from the cameras, which are updated every couple of minutes, to get a picture of the state of traffic along the route they plan to take.

TfL also launched a Twitter account — @TfLTrafficNews — which tweets traffic disruptions as they occur.

TfL has a chequered history with its data; in mid-2010 it launched a London Underground data feed that was derailed by huge demand from developers. To help the feed scale, TfL moved it to Windows Azure. All other feeds live on servers operated by TfL, ZDNet UK understands.