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Website Of The Week: www.trafficengland.com

By Fred Mawer
Updated: 11:04 EDT, 28 July 2010

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If you're planning a car journey of any length in England, I strongly advise you to have a quick check of www.trafficengland.com before you set off.

The information on the website, which is supplied by the National Traffic Control Centre of the Highways Agency, alerts you to any accidents or roadworks - or congestion on motorways and trunk roads (main A roads).

Avoid this: www.trafficengland.com can help you avoid nasty snarl-ups

Strengths

I'm looking at a regional traffic information map for the south-east of England. It highlights, in yellow and red, sections of roads with delays of 15-30 minutes and more than 30 minutes. I can choose to view the map so that it is plotted with signs indicating where there are incidents, roadworks, and roadside message boards.

Place your cursor over a sign, and pop-up boxes tell you more. So I can see there has been an incident clockwise on the M25 between Junction 4 and 6, causing delays of 30 minutes - but that traffic conditions are due to return to normal in an hour.

Crucially, all the data appears to be bang up to date - there's a clock showing when it was last updated.

There are other very useful services. You can look at the traffic flow on a particular motorway - specific average speeds between junctions are shown. And, by selecting a road and your date of travel in the 'Disruptions Search' section, you can identify the location of any planned roadworks across the network that might affect your plans.

Weaknesses

The scope. The information provided only covers main roads in England (there are links to similar websites for Scotland and Wales), and there is no route-planning service.