The home page of Freeway Travel Times: Interactive Dashboard is a Dashboard which contains Traffic Map section, Daily Peak Speeds section, Time of Day Speeds section, Freeway Average Speed section and Congestion section, as explained below.  [Note that every webpage in the PMMS site has a "HOME" button at the top left which will always provide an easy escape back to this Dashboard.]

Traffic Map

Traffic Map is the left pane of the home page. Please note that the Microsoft Silverlight plug-in must have been installed in your browser to correctly show both the background "Bing" map and the overlaid traffic data. The traffic maps section has three user-selectable tabs: "Live Traffic Map" (default view), "Yesterday" and "User Defined". When clicking the "User Defined" tab, you will open a new page. To maximize the map display content, full screen maps without browser borders can be viewed by clicking "Toggle Full Screen" button at the left top corner. Because the background map is the Microsoft Bing Map, you can view the navigate using mouse click-drag and scroll wheel for the basic operations of zooming and panning.   If the map is zoomed or panned to somewhere else, the "Back to Default" button brings you directly back to the Las Vegas Metropolitan area. To exit the full screen mode, press Escape or click the "Toggle Full Screen" button. A complementary color scheme from green to red, representing the levels of travel speeds, is applied in each specific freeway segment with green having highest speed level and red having lowest speed level.

·         Live Traffic Map

Live Traffic Map shows the real-time travel speed which typically updates every one minute. Hovering the mouse over a colored segment will show it’s the most currently available traffic flow data, typically for a 5-minute timespan. If there is a traffic crash, construction or special event occurring, its location will be flashed on the map using an intuitive graphic icon. Click on the icon will show more detailed information of the incident. The Clock shows the current time of day, and it can be move anywhere  within the map window with a mouse click-drag action.

·         Yesterday

Yesterday window depicts the traffic flows and events that occurred the previous day.  When this page is selected, it starts a fast-forward ‘movie’ showing what happened yesterday from 5 AM to 8 PM. User can define a different time range for the ‘movie’ by choosing a Start and End time and clicking the "Play" button on the "Date Time Range Selection" Expander control. The animation is played in the "Repeat" mode. The corresponding time is also shown on the Clock. You can also jump backward or forward by dragging the slider on the TimeSlider Control in similar fashion to any Media Player. You may also adjusting the play speed by clicking on the "+" or "-" buttons.

·         User Defined

User Defined will direct user to the historical traffic map page which allows the user to select data and time range to play the historical traffic animation. The function of "User Defined" is similar to "Yesterday". Traffic data are available going back to October 2009 (The earlier historical traffic data will be available shortly).

Daily Peak Speeds

Daily Peak Speeds is a plot showing a trend of travel speeds over the past two weeks. Every dot connected by the trend line represents true arithmetic average (i.e., mean) peak hour speed of a specific day in the past two weeks. The 15^th and 85^th percentile speed lines are also plotted and compose the shadow area to show the predominant speed range. Calculated results from AM and PM daily peak speeds are shown on different tabs. Generally, the AM peak hour is defined as 6:00-9:00 am; while the PM peak hour is 3:00-6:00 pm.  Where there is a rather narrow shadow band around the mean speed line, this is an indicator that the trip experienced by drivers is relatively reliable.  Where the shadow band is much wider (typically, the PM band is much wider than the AM band), this is an indicator that the typical trip is much more varied in terms of travel time, and is therefore is, relatively, less reliable.

Time of Day Speeds

Time of Day Speeds is a plot showing a trend of average travel speeds over 3-hour AM or PM peak. Every dot connected by the trend line represents average speed of the past two weeks at specific time. The 15^th and 85^th percentile speed lines are also plotted and compose the shadow area. AM peak and PM peak average speeds are shown on different tabs.

Freeway Average Speed

Depicted as a speedometer, Freeway Average Speed provides the AM and PM travel speeds of three different time periods which are "Past 30 Days", "30-60 Days" and "Last Year".

Congestion

In the Congestion section, four speed categories (the different colors) represent the 4 levels of congestion: no congestion (above 55 mph), light congestion (40 to 55 mph), moderate congestion (but traffic is still flowing, 20 to 40 mph) and heavy congestion (lots of stop-and-go conditions, less than 20 mph). The Pie chart displays the average percentages of the four speed categories over the 3-hour peak of yesterday. AM peak and PM peak are presented separately in two tabs.