Southwest Florida 511 Traveler Information System Website
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The SWFL 511 Traveler Information System provides traveler information for the three counties in Southwest Florida. The system receives and processes current traffic data (including construction, lane closures, congestions accidents, weather, etc) and makes information available to the users via the Internet. The website provides a graphical interface to the available traveler information via the Internet. The website synchronizes the current information with the traffic data center to provide the same up-to-date traveler information also accessible over the phone by dialing 511. The website includes capabilities to locate specific traffic event types, localize the display of events to a particular geographic area, view current alerts and emergency messages. It presents traveler information on an interactive, intuitive user-friendly interface.

Contents:

• Main Menu
• Map
• Map Navigation
• Event List
• Event Type Selection
• Weather Panel
• Help Menu

The main screen of the website is shown below. You will see it when you first open the website in your browser.

The main menu of the SWFL 511 website provides links to other websites containing various resources related to highway safety, travel, weather, and other useful information. The following describe the options available through the main menu:

Print Map - Opens a new window with the current view of the map and the list of all the traffic events within the current map view. This option enables user to print out the map and traffic information in a printer-friendly format.

Evacuation Routes - Opens Florida Division of Emergency management website as a new window with the list of maps of storm surge zones and evacuation routes for the state of Florida.

Driving Tips - Opend the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles web page in a new window, that provides access to various DMV services online.

SWFL Weather - Opens the National Weather Service Forecast Office web page in a new window with the latest forecast for the Tampa Bay counties. The website is useful for hurricane and storm tracking, providing the latest radar and satellite imagery.

Florida Tourism - Opens the State of Florida's Official Travel Planning Website in a new window.

The map is the central informational tool of the website. It displays the latest Navteq street-level maps with the traffic events overlaid on top. Each traffic event is represented by a red dot (the event location) and an icon. By moving a mouse cursor over an event location, the user can learn more about an event with an event pop-up that appears automatically. The event pop-up provides the type of an event, together with the street location and the time of the event. All events fall into 4 major categories - incidents, roadworks, adverse weather, and information. Often, the events will have a different icon associated with them, than the map legend shows. By moving the mouse pointer over an event, the exact event type may be obtained via the popup box. As the user zooms into a specific map area (refer to "Map Navigation" section below), the map shows finer level of detail (smaller streets, terrain information).

User can pan map, zoom in/out, zoom onto an event, zoom to an entire map. Map controls in the lower left corner of the map allow the user to perfom zoom/pan/zoom to overview functions. By clicking on the event location (red dot) on the map, the map zooms into that event. User can zoom into an event by clicking the event header in the Event List box (see below). The map scale shows the current magnification level at the bottom of the map.
Also, the user may drag a rectangular selection on the map (by clicking the map in any location - not directly over an existing event - and dragging selection box around the area he/she wants to zoom into). Upon releasing the mouse button, the map will zoom into the selected area. The area has to be large enough to be able to zoom into.

The list to the right of the map contains current traffic events. Each event shows event number, event type icon, date/time of creation, event type, road location (and possibly an intersecting road or an exit number), and event description. By clicking the event date/time repeatedly, the map zooms into the event. The event list only shows the events currently visible on the map. For instance, if a user zooms into a particular location, only events from that visible location will be shown in the list. Each event is numbered, and the corresponding number is shown on the map as well next to the event icon.
The "Highlight Highways" drop-down box allows the user to highlight only those events pertaining to the selected highway/intersection. All other events will be greyed-out with no descriptions, but would still show up in the event list for consistency with the map.

As described above, the events are of the four major types - incidents, roadworks, adverse weather, and information. User may "switch off" particular event types by un-checking the check-box next to the event type in the "Filter Events" box located at the lower left corner of the map. This will filter out all events of that type from the map and the event list.

The weather for the three major cities in the Southwest Florida area is displayed as icons to the left of the map. By moving the mouse over each icon, a popup information will be displayed with further weather data on the selected area. The data is provided by weather.gov, the National Weather Service.

The menu in the bottom of the SWFL 511 web page provides the links to open up help menu, read the disclaimer/FAQ of the 511 system, and contact the SWFL 511 project administration via e-mail.

Please close this window to return back to the SWFL 511 website.