Live and locaal and biased???

[1st of 5]

I sat in the traffic chaos that followed that awful motorcycle accident on Fred rd for about an hour this afternoon. As we crept up to the detour, I could see the remains of the motorcycle and all of the CSI investigators doing their thing, so I tuned to KTSA to try to hear a news bulletin or traffic update. But what do I hear? The usual crap about the usual places. I guess traffic or news never happens other than on 1604/281 north, Broadway/410 or I-35 at olympia pwky. I am pretty sure that KTSA heard about the mess, because everyone around me was yacking on their cellphones to everyone about the accident. So what happened? When I worked out in the Ingram Park area about 5 years ago, 410 was sometimes a parking lot all the way to Vance Jackson, but never a word from the "live and local" liars back then either. It seems that they only care about reporting items for 'those people in those neighborhoods', or they fabricate traffic news much like Jim Rome did in his early radio career. But I guess since no one is really listening, based on their 3 for 1 commercial spots (or whatever you call it when you hear the same commercial 2 or 3 times in a row) or PSA's, who really cares?

 

[Doctor_Technical]

1st et al, it's been over 3 years since I was an SA engineer -- and many more since I did live traffic here in Baton Rouge (definition of "brutal": four guys in a wing-over Cessna 172 doing live reports in the middle of a humid summer) -- but I remain fascinated by the mechanics of how to capture ephemeral traffic info over a large area. In between contemplating ways we would die in a gruesome crash, I enjoyed observing what one could (and could not) see from 2000' up.

Which is my way of asking 1) who does KTSA's traffic, and 2) if any SA traffic companies still fly fixed-wing or rotary aircraft. I'm not here to excuse a reporting lapse, but the worst problem we had in BR was the large blind spot from having to avoid the airport area -- which might explain the spotty reporting of the greater 410 area.

 

[daypart]

Which is my way of asking 1) who does KTSA's traffic, and 2) if any SA traffic companies still fly fixed-wing or rotary aircraft. I'm not here to excuse a reporting lapse, but the worst problem we had in BR was the large blind spot from having to avoid the airport area -- which might explain the spotty reporting of the greater 410 area.

KTSA has in-house people who do traffic from the station. It appears that they get all of their information from the Transguide web site and the SAPD and Fire web sites. I always picture their traffic reporters sitting in front of a web browser with 3 tabs open. ;D

I'm not aware of any stations in town that has airborne traffic reporters. They all seem highly dependent on Transguide. Transguide's blind spot is that it has just one camera north of the airport on 281 and no cameras between I-10 and I-35 on 1604.

BTW, for those San Antonians who are members of Twitter, there's an interesting new traffic service for San Antonio that just went live this week.
http://twitter.com/transguide seems to aggregate the SAPD site and Transguide.

 

[Discover]

I drove past that accident before they closed Fred Rd. On our way back Fred Road was closed, all the station vehicles were stuck in traffic and couldn't get near the accident. Maybe that's why no one knew what was going on to report it.