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TomTom study reveals the best and worst travel times on Singapore roads.

West and central parts of Singapore experience the largest traffic slowdowns during the morning peak hours.

TomTom did a study on driving times between the City and different suburbs during the peak hours.

The time taken to drive from each suburb to Raffles Place during peak hour in the morning (8-9am) was compared with the time taken during silent hours (1-5am) – when traffic was not a constraint to vehicle speed.

Traffic slowdowns during the evening peak hours in Singapore.

Similarly, the time taken to drive from Raffles Place to each suburb during the peak hour in the evening (5-7pm) was compared with the time taken during silent hours.

The spread of traffic degradation seems broader in the morning peak hours compared to the evening peak hours.

Clementi and Bukit Timah were found to suffer the greatest slow downs during the two peak hours compared to unobstructed driving timings between these two suburbs and the City.

New Zealand based Valerie Cross of TomTom Asia Pacific told me during her visit to Singapore that IQ Routes takes into consideration the different travel times for each road during different times of the day. “That’s because the actual travel speeds of each road varies throughout the day, and IQ Routes takes that into account.”Bishan and Jurong West were another two suburbs that experiences severe slowdowns during the peak hours.

For the evening peak hour, the overall spread of degradation was much smaller than during the morning peak hour.

Tampines is an interesting exception in that is the least affected by the morning peak hour, yet it was most severely affected during the evening peak hour.

There doesn’t seem to be any obvious reason to that.

TomTom derived the traffic data from the logs of portable navigation devices (PND) of its users when the latter connected their GPS devices to the Internet for updates.

The traffic data were extracted without any tags that could be used to identify the PND users.

Historic traffic data along roads are used during route planning by TomTom PNDs.

These historical traffic data is also used by TomTom to inject intelligence into the route planning algorithms of its PNDs, in the form of its IQ Routes feature.

Instead of planning routes based on jam-free traffic conditions and maximum road speed limits, IQ Routes take into consideration the historical and real travel timings of those roads considered for the routes for more accurate “fastest route” recommendations.

It’s as if the PND is a local choosing to drive further on a less congested road in order to avoid a 300m stretch that typically takes an hour due to peak hour traffic.

The next step beyond IQ Routes is live traffic information, which TomTom offers for 22 countries in the form of its HD Traffic feature.

Unfortunately, it is not available and for the moment, TomTom does not yet have any plans to introduce that to its Singapore users, because of the complexity of setting up its own live traffic sources and integration with other live traffic sources.