Abstract: A system and methods for viewing real time traffic video on a handheld device are shown and described. The method includes requesting by a handheld device, data from a remote traffic camera responsive to user input through a menu-driven interface of an application program. An appliance, residing in a traffic management center, creates coded image data representing a group of concatenated images by extracting selected frames from a video stream of the remote traffic camera and transmits the coded data to a host server. The handheld device receives the coded image data from the host server. The method also includes decoding the coded image data by the application program and displaying, on the handheld device, the group of concatenated images in repeated loops.