'Live Traffic' on Google Maps comes to India

Check Google Maps on your Android mobile or your desktop and you will notice a new layer, called Traffic. Clearly, Live Traffic layer on Google Maps seems to have come to India now. Enable that and have your location specified, and you will be able to see what the road traffic is like in that city. At the bottom left of the Map, users can see a legend depicting the nature of the traffic at the time - ranging from slow to fast. Again, to view what the traffic conditions are like more keenly, users can zoom in to the location and with the Live Traffic layer on, they even get to know what the traffic is like at that location. The colour-coded legend lines depicted on the map explain the nature of the traffic at that place.

Google Maps Live Traffic

If users do not want Live Traffic updates, but want something more specific as traffic during a particular time on a particular day, then all they got to do is change their preference at the bottom left. Here users can change their preference to “Traffic at day and time” and enter their choice of day and time and click on done. Once that is done, the map depicts the details as per the options picked. Google specifies that the data provided when a user picks the "Traffic at day and time" option is based on past conditions. 

With the update that Google Maps got recently, Google claims to have made transit information that it has been providing by way of Google Maps even more useful. Part of the update list are changes that Google made to the Transit Lines Layer. The update here means that users can now select a specific mode of public transport - then be it train, bus, tram or subway to be displayed on their mobile map. This way, all other modes excluding the chosen mode are hidden on the map. Understandably, a feature like this is helpful, especially in areas where there are several modes of transport available. Also featuring in the update list is the layout of station pages. Users can now open it by tapping on the name of the station on the application on their mobile device.

Google puts in its official blog post that Google Maps for Android offers more than a million transit stops globally, and this is across almost 500 cities. In India, it is at Bangalore (Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation Ltd), Chennai (Chennai MRTS), Delhi (Delhi Metro Rail) and Kolkata (Kolkata Metro). 

A little before Google Maps for Android got its update, the search giant introduced its Live Traffic update layer to Maps across Bogotá, Panama City and San Jose (Costa Rica). In addition, Google was also to bring its real-time traffic data to 130 smaller cities in the U.S., including Kalamazoo (Michigan), Portland (Maine) and Tuscaloosa (Alabama).

Clearly, having Live Traffic updates running on one's phone is precious. Needless to add, users can now plan their commute accordingly, with such data readily available. [via Tech2]