Highway advisory radio

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To read about HAR in biology, see human accelerated regions.

Highway advisory radio (HAR), sometimes also called travelers' information stations (TIS), are licensed low-power AM radio stations set up by local transport departments to provide bulletins to motorists and other travelers regarding traffic and other delays. These are often near highways and airports, and occasionally other tourism attractions such as national parks. In the latter case, they often provide a loop of prerecorded information about the park's historic and other background information.

In the United States, only governments may have licenses for TIS/HAR stations, and music is generally disallowed. The FCC formerly reserved the bottom and top channels (530 and 1610) on the AM band for these stations, before the Extended AM broadcast band (1610 to 1700) was introduced in North America. (Most radios tune to 1710, however this does not seem to be used for any stations so far.) LPFM stations may be licensed to governments as well, but these are not considered part of the TIS/HAR service. Stations for U.S. national parks and other units under the U.S. federal government are licensed by the NTIA rather than the FCC.

The concept is not limited to the U.S.: TIS stations operate in Canada (on both AM and FM bands) and in France (at 107.7 MHz FM along selected autoroutes), and possibly other countries as well.

[edit] External links

• FCC's directory of TIS stations
• Information on French Autoroutes-Info stations You can listen to streaming audio from these stations as well. (in French)
• Transportation Communications Newsletter