Hampshire pilots Kizoom's Live Travel Alerts system to tackle road congestion

Hampshire continues to innovate with a personalised Live Travel Alerts trial using latest Kizoom technology for mobile phones

London, 3 August 2009 — Kizoom, the new unified brand name for transport information leaders Cityspace and Kizoom, effective today, announces that Hampshire County Council is piloting Live Travel Alerts, its latest innovative travel information service for mobile phones and personal email, to help tackle road congestion on key routes.

Operating out of Hampshire's Traffic and Travel Information Centre under the ROMANSE banner, the Live Travel Alerts service, being trialed among Council workers until the autumn, is delivering route specific information requested by subscribers to help drivers plan their fastest route and contribute to alleviating rush hour hot spots into and out of the bustling city of Winchester.

"Kizoom's Live Travel Alerts service is an important pilot scheme as part of our wider initiative to manage incidents and road congestion and drive uptake of public transport," said Tony Brown, Head of Intelligent Transport Systems.

"We see the personalisation of travel information as key to having a real impact as it conveniently equips drivers to make route and journey time decisions. If you're alerted to the fact that the M3 is gridlocked into Winchester at 8.15am and the car park is full, you're more likely to leave later, change route or take the train!"

Harnessing Hampshire's ROMANSE road management system, UTMC feeds and other transport data, Kizoom's advanced alerting engine constantly 'listens' to both event data received from feeds and subscription requests made by users, intelligently matches them and delivers a dependable travel 'intelligence' service which is simple to use and cost effective.

The advanced alerting engine being used in the Hampshire trial has been developed and refined by Kizoom through years of experience running the popular Tube alerts system for Transport for London.

"As a long time technology partner to Hampshire County Council, we've worked closely with Tony Brown and his team in developing a progressive travel information infrastructure to support the drive of this truly progressive authority to realise a multi-modal vision for Hampshire," comments Tim Halford, Regional Development Manager at Kizoom.

"In piloting Alerts, Hampshire is embracing personalisation in transport technology which we wholly agree is the key to getting traffic flowing and people moving. In this initiative, Hampshire recognises the power of the mobile phone and personal email for delivering proactive information; using the right channel at the moment of decision - home or office - empowers the travelling public and directly contributes to modal shift."

Within the pilot scheme, emails are sent free and texts are supplied at 10p per alert, picked up by the Council. Both public and privately funded models are being considered for the longer term as is the integration of comparable rail departures into the alert services.

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Note to editors:

From 3 August 2009, Kizoom and Cityspace have joined together under one brand name - Kizoom - and are working out of one location in new London offices.

Since Cityspace acquired Kizoom in May last year, the businesses have become market leaders in delivering information to the public at the point of need. Kizoom is focused on transforming travel data into real-time bus, rail, air and road travel information, delivered on-street and to mobile phones and the web. With the strength of our combined expertise, today, we work in partnership with 125 of the UK's largest and most progressive authorities and operators.

One brand, under one roof:

Kizoom
Fleet House
8-12 New Bridge Street
London EC4V 6AL

Tel: 020 7822 8510
email: contact@kizoom.com

For further information, please contact:

Hannah Beauchamp
Marketing Assistant
Tel: +44 (0)20 7822 8510
Email:press@kizoom.com
www.kizoom.com

About Kizoom

Kizoom works on behalf of transport authorities and operators to transform multi-modal transport data into relevant and easy to digest information. It then delivers this information across a wide range of channels - the web, mobile phones, kiosks and screens - to enable the travelling public and transport professionals to make informed decisions.

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