Live traffic comes to Google Maps in SA

Search giant Google has expanded its live traffic information service to Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town. By Craig Wilson.

Added by Craig Wilson on 20 June 2012.
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Google has expanded its live traffic coverage, where traffic information is overlaid on its Maps service, to include Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town. The service is available when using Google Maps online.

The service works by crowd-sourcing information about speed and travelling time from users of Google Navigation or Google Maps for mobile, much like turn-by-turn navigation application Waze. Roads that currently aren’t covered will be as more users of the service travel along them.

Aside from offering real-time traffic information, the service can offer estimated travelling time when planning routes and suggest alternative routes. This is possible using either the mobile versions of the service or Google Maps online, making it possible to check conditions before departure or en route.

SA is just one of seven countries to get the service for the first time. The other newcomers are Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Mexico, Peru and Romania. In addition, 19 countries that already have the service have seen their coverage expanded.  — (c) 2012 NewsCentral Media

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  • Greg Mahlknecht

    Did you cover Bing maps getting live traffic coverage?  Far superior quality and coverage to Google Live Traffic.  http://binged.it/KjVoui … full national coverage.  The data is courtesy of Nokia.

  • http://twitter.com/bosunrsa Bosun

    @Greg I just compared the two, and Google seems to cover more roads, at least locally (Around Midrand), and not just the major roads and highways.

  • Greg Mahlknecht

    Google has a spattering of many roads, including the smaller ones, but Bing seems to have all the major roads down to R level.   A quick look at Google around Midrand shows about 1/3 of the M-roads and about half the R-roads with no data.  Nokia’s coverage is impressive.  Even Pofadder is covered.  Yes, I checked :)

  • http://www.facebook.com/merajc Meraj Chhaya

    Didn’t Nokia have this (RTTI – real time traffic information) ages ago?

  • Greg Mahlknecht

    Yes, routes.tomtom.com is the gold standard for this stuff, Nokia’s had it for ages, and Bing got it last week.  Google’s the last to the party but clearly has the most influence over the media - the announcement made the front page on every local tech news site!

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