Manual / Traffic radio

Traffic radio

Kinetic Melbourne OCC — the tool built for Kinetic Melbourne's Operational Control Centre — can play a radio station's recorded traffic bulletins, and remembers which ones you have already heard. This page is what it plays, where each control is, and what the small number on the button counts.

Is it here at all?

The Radio button is at the top of the map tools column, in the bottom-right corner of the Map Explorer, above Layers. Hovering it says Traffic radio.

If it is not there, this deployment has no station set up. There is nothing to switch on from the app, and nothing you can do about it from here — it is a setup question for whoever administers the deployment. Same rule as every other optional part of this app: no dead switches.

The button is only on the Map Explorer, because that is where the map tools live. A bulletin that is playing keeps playing when you move to another tab — you simply cannot reach the controls until you come back.

What it plays

Recorded traffic bulletins, the way the station broadcasts them: roughly one every quarter of an hour in the peaks, one every half hour off-peak, from about five in the morning until about seven in the evening. Overnight the station publishes nothing. Each one runs about half a minute of speech, sometimes longer where the station has put advertising in it.

The station this app ships knowing how to fetch is 3AW's traffic report. Whatever your deployment is set up with, the foot of the panel names the broadcast and who owns the recording — for 3AW that line reads:

3AW 693 Melbourne Traffic Report — Tapt Media / Nine Radio

This is a broadcaster's editorial content, not data. Nothing in a bulletin is measured by this app, nothing in it colours anything on the map, and nothing in it reaches a diversion figure. It is somebody on the radio telling you about the roads.

The list reaches back about four days, which is as far as the station publishes in one go. There is no archive behind that, and no way to ask for one.

The panel, and the transport

Two places, and the split is deliberate. The panel is where you choose. The bar is where you play.

The panel opens when you press Radio, beside the map tools. It holds the station switcher (only where more than one station is set up), a Mark all heard button, the list of bulletins newest first, a Load 25 more button while more are being held back — fewer, where fewer are left — and the attribution line at the foot.

It is a menu: it closes when you click anywhere else, including on the map. That is why the playback controls are not in it — a panel that took the pause button away with it would leave a bulletin playing with nothing able to stop it.

The transport is the first block in the bar along the bottom centre of the map, headed Traffic radio with the bulletin's day and time beside it. It appears the moment a bulletin is loaded and stays until you press its ✕. Pausing does not put it away — a control that vanished when you paused would be a control you could not un-pause.

The panel and the Layers panel share one corner and cannot both be open: opening either closes the other.

Heard and unheard

Every row in the list carries a dot, the time the bulletin was published, the day and its age, and a button. Rows you have not heard stand out; rows you have are dimmed.

Where this is kept. Signed in, it follows your account to any browser. Signed out, it is kept in this browser only. Signing in merges the two rather than replacing one with the other, so signing in cannot bring back a bulletin you have already played on this machine.

What the numbers mean

What they do not mean

"Off air" is not "no traffic to report." It is a statement about the station — that it has stopped publishing, which it does every evening. It says nothing whatever about the roads, and the app is in no position to make that claim.

The badge is not "bulletins I have not played." It counts only the recent ones. After twelve hours an unheard bulletin drops out of the count and stays in the list showing unheard, so the morning shift is not greeted by six bulletins about last night's roads. Mark all heard works on the whole list, not on the badge — which is why it can still be available when the badge reads zero.

The one exception: a bulletin you marked unheard on purpose keeps counting however old it is. The twelve-hour window exists to stop a backlog nagging, not to overrule someone who has just said they still want to hear something.

A badge of zero on a new browser is not a badge that is broken. The first time this browser sees the station, everything already published counts as heard. Otherwise a fresh sign-in would announce four days of history nobody was going to listen to.

"Mark all heard" does not mean "everything the station has published." It marks everything this app has actually fetched. The station publishes ahead of the app noticing, so a bulletin that went out a minute ago still arrives unheard after you have pressed it — deliberately, because the alternative silently swallows it.

The length on the transport is not the length the station advertises. The station describes a bulletin as about thirty-five seconds; the file that arrives often runs closer to a minute and a half, because advertising is inserted into it. The app shows the length of what is actually playing and ignores the advertised one, and "have I heard this" is judged against what plays.

The row times do not follow your Clock setting. They are wall-clock timestamps in your browser's own format, not service times, so the 12-hour/24-hour choice in ⚙ Settings does not reach them. See The clock.

The title the station gives a bulletin is not its time. Three bulletins in the eight o'clock hour are all titled "8AM" upstream. The app keeps that title as hover text only; the time on the row is the honest one.

When it looks wrong

The panel writes a different sentence for each cause, and the sentence is the diagnosis.

A row that will not take a click is one the app is still showing but the station no longer offers. Hovering it says No longer available from the station. You can still mark it heard; you cannot play it.