Triona Launches New version of its Distance Calculation Service

A new version of Triona’s distance calculation service is now available. Version 1.1 includes some exciting new features as well as some minor bug fixes.

Additional Route Alternatives

The service now returns several route alternatives if there are relevant routes available. The first route returned is always the “best” route so if you make no changes the best route will still be returned.

Showing alternative routes to users means that often one of the other routes may be the route the user expects. This in turn leads to increased user satisfaction and the perception that the service gives a better result.

Pay Stations displayed along the Routes

New in this version is that we now return the pay stations positioned along the calculated route (for example in Stockholm, Sundvalls bridge, Oslo). This applies to both Norway and Sweden. Each pay station has information about the standard charges for cars and lorries. This information together with the new route alternatives feature above helps the user when deciding which route to take.

Support for Coordinate Transformations in Searches

It is already possible to specify which coordinate system the resulting geometry should be returned in for the route. We have now expanded this in both our SOAP and REST APIs so it’s possible to specify different coordinate systems as query parameters (e.g. positions) and route results.

This makes it simpler to use the results from the geocoding (returned as Sweref99TM) in the route calculation and then get the result as WGS84.

Force Border Crossing via Pay Stations

We have added a parameter in the routing call which can be used to force a route between Sweden and Norway to cross the border where there is a pay station. We think this is very good for those of you who calculate routes for carriers who have goods which must clear customs at the border crossing.

Data Updates

When you use our service the route calculation always relies on information that is up to date and the data is continuously updated via the National Road databases in Sweden and Norway.

The new features are only available in version 1.1 of the SOAP and REST interfaces. Version 1.0 will be available for existing clients but will not have any new features or improvements. All new features are backwards-compatible with earlier data contracts so no changes are needed in the event you want to use the new functionality.