AA travel website runs into traffic jam on its first day

Thousands of motorists flocked to a new online map launched yesterday by the Automobile Association, crashing its free website within hours with demands for travel information.

The motoring organisation and digital mapping partner GeoSmart were last night urgently reviewing capacity needed to cope with the unprecedented demand, but say the site may take a day or two to rev back to top gear. AA spokesman Greg Hunting said it had taken a year to develop the site, but nobody could have forecast how immediately popular it would prove after featuring on breakfast television.

"We built a lot of capacity into it, so it is a bit surprising," he said.

GeoSmart managing director Phil Allen, whose company also provides online mapping to government departments and mobile-phone company Vodafone, said the system was designed to handle up to 360,000 information requests an hour.

The AA SmartMap, when it works, allows motorists to plan journeys on their home computers or laptops and find thousands of facilities at or on their way to their destinations. These include anything from accommodation and restaurants to cash machines, boat ramps and public toilets.

Once users type in their favoured destination, it shows up on a street map, with a zooming device for greater or lesser magnification.

They can then key in their existing location and receive step-by-step directions to their destination with an accompanying route map.

"You put in where you want to go or what you want to find, whether it is an ATM or a trip to Taupo or whatever it happens to be," Mr Hunting said.

Users can add search requests for local features of interest.