Windows 10: New route traffic coloring feature for Bing Maps

Brink · Mar 21, 2019

There is an old saying that you don’t know where you are going until you get there. With Bing Maps new route coloring feature, you will know right away where the delays will be along your selected route so you can change your route, your plans or your destination based on the route ahead!

For example, if you are leaving Redmond Town Center for Westlake Center in Seattle, you can see the delays on WA-520 W and I-90 W before you decide which route to take. Also, with our new route labels showing the travel mode, distance and time of each route, you can easily compare and toggle between the different routes quickly on the map.

While blue means no traffic delays, the orange and red colors highlight moderate to heavy traffic delays on the route. These are calculated based on a combination of current traffic updates and predictions from historic data depending on the length of the route.

Traffic coloring not only helps you select the best route for your trip, but can also be very useful when there are major traffic delays due to inclement weather, big events, accidents, or road construction nearby. For example, if there is an MLB or NFL game in town, you can avoid the most impacted roads near the event and choose an option that offers the least delays.

In addition, if you need to take a ferry as part of your route, Bing Maps visualizes the ferry segments using dashes to differentiate that part of the trip. The image below illustrates the route between Redmond and Discovery Bay in Washington State. Bing Maps highlights the ferry segment between Edmond and Kingston with a dashed line.

The Bing Maps Routing and Traffic Team is constantly working to make navigation and route planning easier for our users. To try out the traffic coloring feature, go to Maps.

- Bing Maps Team
Click to expand...

Source: https://blogs.bing.com/maps/2019-03/...affic-coloring

:)

Brink · Mar 21, 2019

Geocoding and Routing improvements added to Bing Maps

Geocoding and Routing are core services in mapping platforms. Today, the Bing Maps team is happy to announce improved algorithms and increased coverage support for these services, which also directly improve the coverage of many of the new Bing Maps Fleet Management APIs, such as the Isochrone and Distance Matrix APIs which rely on routing data.

Geocoder Improvements

The Bing Maps team has spent several years developing a new backend geocoder, which provides improved matching logic and the ability to make faster data updates. This new geocoder went into production earlier this year, and the Bing Maps developer APIs were seamlessly updated on the backend, thus instantly migrating all users to the new geocoder without any code changes required by them.

In addition to creating a new backend geocoder, the team has been working hard on increasing the support for geocoding globally. Bing Maps ranks the level of geocoding support for each country using the following criteria:

Rooftop – Addresses are resolved to the latitude/longitude coordinate at the center of the address parcel (property boundary). Rooftop has the highest level of accuracy support. Its coverage varies by country.

Address – Addresses are interpolated to a latitude/longitude coordinate on the street.

Street Name – Addresses are resolved to the latitude/longitude coordinate of the street that contains the address. The address number is not processed.

Basic – Geocoding support is limited and primarily only accurate to the city level. If an address is valid, Bing Maps attempts to resolve it, but a result is not guaranteed.

The number of countries in which Bing Maps has Rooftop or Address level detailed coverage has grown from 82 to 109 countries.

[table][tr][td]Highest Level Support[/td] [td]# of Countries[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Old Coverage[/td] [td]New Coverage[/td] [td][/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Rooftop[/td] [td]17[/td] [td]46[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Address[/td] [td]65[/td] [td]63[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Street Name[/td] [td]12[/td] [td]46[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Basic[/td] [td]159[/td] [td]98[/td] [/tr] [/table]

Detailed geocoding coverage information can be found here.

Routing Service Improvements

Bing Maps provides routing for the following modes of transportation: cars, trucks, walking and public transit. Bing Maps provides both real-time and predictive traffic based routing. The team is constantly tweaking and improving the algorithms and data to provide more efficient and accurate routes. Bing Maps ranks the level of standard routing support for each country using the following criteria:

Good - The country/region has detailed road data available in most populated centers and most of these have been verified for accuracy. Coverage is updated frequently. Remote areas may lack some road information.

Fair - At a minimum, the country/region has major road data available as well as some detailed road data. Most often, these roads have not been verified for accuracy. Coverage is updated over time. Please visit the map to assess if the current version meets the needs of your application.

Major Roads Only - At a minimum, the country/region coverage includes major roads. These roads have not been verified for accuracy. Coverage is updated over time. Please visit the map to assess if the current version meets the needs of your application.

The number of countries in which Bing Maps has good routing coverage has grown from 58 to 116 countries.

[table][tr][td][/td] [td]# of Countries[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Old Coverage[/td] [td]New Coverage[/td] [td][/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Good[/td] [td]58[/td] [td]116[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Fair[/td] [td]82[/td] [td]54[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Major Roads Only[/td] [td]113[/td] [td]83[/td] [/tr] [/table]

Detailed routing coverage information can be found here.

Truck Routing

Truck routing support was just recently added to Bing Maps and is supported in 80 countries.

Detailed truck routing coverage information can be found here.

If you have any questions or feedback about Bing Maps, please let us know on the Bing Maps forums or visit the Bing Maps website to learn more about the Bing Maps platform.

- Bing Maps Team
Click to expand...

Source: Geocoding and Routing improvements added to Bing Maps | Maps Blog

Brink · Mar 21, 2019

Bing Maps V8 SDK Fall Update

The main release branch of the Bing Maps Version 8 web control (V8) has been in a code freeze over the last two months for the holiday season. Over this time the Bing Maps team focused primarily on bug fixes and performance improvements in Bing Maps V8. Here are some of the more notable new features added in this release.Cardinal Splines

The Spatial Math module has a new function that calculates a cardinal spline that passes through a specified array of locations.

Try it now

Multiple Map Support

Some applications will sometimes want to display two or more maps on a single page. With this release, the Bing Maps V8 web control now supports loading multiple map instances on a single page.

Route Path Locations

When you calculate a route using the directions manager, you can now easily get an array of locations that make up the route path. This is useful if you want to create a custom styled route line on the map, or if you want to perform route-based calculations such as search for data along or near a route. Combine this with the Bing Maps REST elevation service and easily generate route elevation profiles. This is documented as part of the Route response object here.

In Summary

A complete list of new features added in this release can be found on the What’s New page in the documentation on MSDN. We have many other features and functionalities on the road map for Bing Maps V8. If you have any questions or feedback about V8, please let us know on the Bing Maps forums or visit the Bing Maps website to learn more about our V8 web control features.

- Bing Maps Team
Click to expand...

Source: http://blogs.bing.com/maps/January-2...DK-Fall-Update

mgerbasio · Mar 21, 2019

Drive+ Traffic Routing

Hi,

I've been using Android phones with Google Maps for several years and recently switched to WP8.1 with Here Drive+ for navigation. I'm in the USA, New York City metro area, and find the route selection based on traffic not good. From what I see on the map,
the actual traffic (yellow/red lines) does seem to be accurate as far as I can tell, but the routing seems to ignore it. I find I can't rely on it to give me the best route to get to my destination based on current traffic conditions. I also find the
ETA to be incorrect by 15-30 minutes where Google Maps was much closer to actual time.

As an example, yesterday, I had two route choices, one was more miles with no traffic and a second was less miles with heavy traffic. There are smart signs on the road showing the drive time to the George Washington Bridge from a point. One route was a 15
minute drive the other was a 54 minute drive. Radio news traffic confirmed what the signs said.

I could see on Drive+ that the green, yellow, red lines seemed to match the conditions on the road sign and where I could see traffic flow. Drive+ selected the heavy traffic route, I seleted the light traffic route. Drive+ kept trying to re-route me on the
heavy traffic road via u-turns and connecting roads. It showed my time to my destination as 4:11PM. As I continued on my route, it finally showed me on this route and changed the ETA to 3:50PM. It should have routed me using a shorter drive time from the start.

The app needs to better handle traffic conditions for route selection as this seems to be typical.

Windows 10: New route traffic coloring feature for Bing Maps

New route traffic coloring feature for Bing Maps

New route traffic coloring feature for Bing Maps

New route traffic coloring feature for Bing Maps

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