Abstract: A portable electronic device receives and stores digitally coded traffic reports for a covered geographical area. Upon user request, the device presents traffic information relevant to a user-specified vehicle trip within the covered area. Traffic reports are collected at a traffic operations center and are encoded and then broadcast to the units within the covered geographical area using radio frequency transmission. A touch-sensitive map is used to indicate trip origin, destination, and routings of interest. The device makes calculations to select and modify the relevant reports; and the traffic information from the selected reports is presented to the user by synthesized or digitized voice sounds. In addition to presenting the information on demand, the device also automatically announces new traffic reports received by the device which are relevant to the user-specified trip.