Traffic Slowdown – Plan Routes with Optimized Route Duration
A highway early in the morning is open and free, but that same highway in the afternoon is a hopeless tangle of traffic. Your customers do not care about the reasons why your drivers arrive later than agreed. They want your delivery drivers, field sales reps, field service technicians, or other field employees to arrive on time, no matter what. Route4Me’s dynamic routing software always notifies you when the routes you are planning start at a busy time or the rush hour and automatically prompts you to adjust the travel time slowdown. Adjusting the travel time slowdown enables you to effortlessly account for heavy traffic and traffic congestion along your planned routes so that you can make sure that your drivers will get to their destinations on time, and your customers will remain happy.
To plan routes with adjusted traffic slowdown, first, go to Plan New Route from the navigation menu.
Next, select one of the preferred route data import methods (Interactive Map Editor, Copy-and-Paste, Upload a File, Import Data, or Upload Scan(s)).
After that, go to the Schedule tab and then input the preferred route start time and date into the corresponding fields. If the route starts at a busy time or the rush hour, you are automatically prompted to adjust the travel time slowdown to account for heavy traffic.
To adjust the driving time slowdown, click on the corresponding drop-down list and then select the preferred percentage of the slowdown that you want to apply to the route.
After that, specify the rest of the route’s parameters to your preference and then click on the Create Route and Proceed to Add Addresses button.
Next, import the route addresses using one of the previously selected methods. When importing a spreadsheet with route data, for it to be successfully processed, the spreadsheet must contain a header row and data rows. The header defines the type of information you are importing, while the corresponding data rows contain the actual information/values that you import into the system. Besides the obligatory Address column, you can also include other data columns.
Learn more about Route4Me’s spreadsheet requirements.
In the Verify Addresses on Map window, you can view all imported and processed addresses on the map, as well as check their geocoding statuses. Green-colored dots indicate that the corresponding addresses were successfully geocoded with High Confidence. Addresses that have yellow colored dots next to them should be reviewed and fixed accordingly.
Once the route is planned, it is optimized and then opened in the Route Editor where you can modify it, as well as added to the Routes List with all your routes. Travel time slow down is applied only to the total estimated driving time of the route, leaving the total distance of the route unchanged.
To display the traffic density lines on the map, first, go to Map Settings and then check the Traffic box in the list.
Traffic density lines on the map display busy roads (in red) and the roads that have little traffic (in green) so that you can get a real-time visual perspective of the traffic situation in the area where you are planning or driving your routes.
