Road Conditions on the A303 - Some Useful Websites and Apps

We are often asked about what resources are available to help travellers and locals to avoid the worst of the jams on the A303, so we thought we would try and group a few of them together in a single post.

We probably haven't spotted all of them, so you might want to bookmark this particular post as we intend to update it if we find anything else particularly useful.

The two iPhone apps we use most are provided by the AA and the RAC - they are intended for members of each organisation and amongst other things, give live traffic reports.  The AA app looks like this:

and the RAC app is very similar.

They don't always show the same problem at the same time, so it's worth having both of them if you are a regular traveller.

The Highways Agency also have their  Traffic Map (beta) on the Traffic England website.

It can be a bit slow, but does provide a wealth of information that can be customised to meet your own particular needs.  It provides direct links to the traffic cameras that sit alongside the A303 and many other major roads.  For us, checking the camera at Solstice Park, Amesbury, is a quick way to check on westbound traffic jams.

 The downside is that this camera, useful as it is, has an unfortunate tendency to "fail" when the traffic is particularly heavy.   We're sure the Highways Agency would claim that this is pure co-incidence, but it happens way too often for that.  It also happens to other A303 cameras when the traffic is bad.

 The biggest issue with the cameras on the A303 is that there are so few of them compared to other strategic routes.  The nearest one to the west of Stonehenge is several miles away at Mere.   There has to be a huge tailback of eastbound traffic for this camera to show anything helpful.  One of the most useful sites we have found, and only found recently is Frixo.

They provide some useful daily statistics that give an indication of the average traffic speed along the whole of the A303 and the spot speed at several different locations.

For detailed westbound information look here, and for eastbound information look here.  I've included a live feed from Frixo at the very bottom of this page.

If you know of any other resources like these, please let us know!