Gina - best of luck getting the right people to do traffic.
When I listen and am waiting to find out if I should venture out on I-5 or try "surface streets" instead, or not, it's lately been a hit or miss in terms of the traffic reports I hear on KOMO and KIRO-FM. Expecially on weekends and evenings. Especially Friday evenings seem to be lacking useful traffic reports, when they're usually needed most. Not sure if those are your folks, but can I pass along some suggestions for an end-user of the product?
Sometimes I find out the hard way that the reporters completely overlook major back ups, perhaps thinking we heard their last report already. Often the reporters speed thru a report in less than ten seconds, and don't say what town they're talking about (like we all know which 71st street they're talking about? There are a lot of 116th Streets and 124th Avenues that cross the freeways around here, too. They usually don't give the NE or SW or Ave or Street to the numbered street names - so we're not likely to know what they're talking about, unless we're in that particular backup already, or have to think it thru and then miss the rest of the report).
I think it's best for traffic reporters to say if they're talking about Tacoma or Olympia or North Seattle or Marysville, etc. BEFORE they give speficics on an incident, so that we can quickly grasp what they're saying, especially in case we are behind the wheel and not able to listen as closely as we might want to while dodging drivers who look as if they're ready to cause the next accident!
It's also helpful for traffic reporters to give the streets the same as we'd find them referenced on the highway signs. I can't tell you how many times I've heard references to "Swamp Creek." Even tho' I apparently live near there, no one I've spoken to around here actually knows where that's supposed to be, since there are no road signs mentioning that name for anything. Likewise, when a reporter zips a reference to a state highway number instead of, for instance, the more commonly used name, such as 196th Street in Lynnwood, I think a lot of listeners will miss it, since we're not looking at state maps like they are to follow their report. I pity the out of towners trying to figure out how to get thru the bottlenecks that plague this area.
Thanks for any info.