TheBuzz
TheBuzz
Airborne Traffic reports
things looking upFor the past couple of months rumors have been flying that Hawaii's morning and afternoon traffic reporters wouldn't be -- flying, that is.
Flights have continued since shortly after Sept. 11 due to a special waiver obtained by Airborne Traffic, a company which provides the reports.
Atlanta-based Cox Radio Inc., which operates six Oahu radio stations, had notified the company that its contract to provide broadcast traffic reports might not be renewed, pending budget reviews.
Cox has now extended the contract through the end of January as the two work toward an agreement, said Cox Radio Hawaii Vice President and General Manager Austin Vali.
"Austin's going to bat for us," said Airborne Traffic President Kelly Peterle, who gathers information from a ground-based location and feeds the data to her husband and company Vice President Tony Scott Peterle.
Airborne's other clients are New Wave Broadcasting LP's five Oahu radio stations and KITV TV for its "Good Morning Hawaii" news program.
Dallas-based Clear Channel Communications Inc., which paid to have traffic reporter Jason Yotsuda ride along, "yanked him out of the plane" in October, Kelly Peterle said.
Yotsuda reports via two-way radio from the City and County's Traffic Control Center on Kinalau Place, and the information he gathers is used on all seven Clear Channel stations on Oahu, as well as on KHON TV's "Channel Two Morning News."
"We feel like what we have is superior," said radio group General Manager Chuck Cotton, in light of the Federal Aviation Administration restrictions on flight paths over major highway corridors.
"We're real pleased with the job Jason's doing," he said.
The traffic center's 11 traffic monitors can be tuned to about 100 traffic cameras around Oahu. Some 44 more cameras are on the way, which will extend the center's monitoring capability toward Kunia and Fort Weaver Road, Yotsuda said.
"Three of them are 50-something-inch screens," he said, adding that they have a zoom feature.
"It's kind of neat, I can see things now that I wasn't able to see from the plane."
The planes were regularly given clearance to fly at 2,500 feet, while the minimum altitude is 1,500, he said.
Another benefit of being on the ground, Yotsuda said, is more immediately available creature comforts, should nature call during traffic-watch time.
A Web site that looks in on the traffic control center through a fish-eye lens can be viewed at: http://citycams. co.honolulu.hi.us/tcc.stream ing.html.
Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin.
Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle,
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached
at: eengle@starbulletin.com