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N3 road info available via SMS

By Stuart Lowman, ITWeb junior journalist
Johannesburg, 10 Dec 2004

A new SMS service has been launched for N3 toll road users, which provides road users with immediate access to vital real-time information that could affect their journey.

The N3 toll concession and Setso Africa have set up Rrapid, a messaging service that relays incidents happening on the 418km N3 toll road between Heidelberg in Gauteng and Cedara in KwaZulu-Natal.

Road users can SMS "KZN" or "GP" to the number 37003, depending on which direction they are driving.

Once an SMS is sent, road users are sent updates for a period of five hours, after which the service will time out. "The five-hour window period takes into account an average four-hour drive and a one-hour lunch break," says Wayde Fortune, MD of Setso design concepts.

According to Fortune, the N3 toll concession needed a real-time service that informs motorists about accidents, traffic congestion and extreme weather conditions. While the N3 toll concession does have a Web site, it is not readily available to all road users while driving between the two provinces.

Nine patrol vehicles monitor the route and send the relevant information to a call centre, which then SMSes the subscribed motorists.

The service is available on all cellphone networks and costs R7.50 an SMS.

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