Mountain View, California — If you are a Google Maps admirer residing in New Zealand, Norway or Hong Kong, your lucky days have just begun, as the search titan from Mountain View, CA on its official mapping blog announced that major cities and highways in New Zealand, Norway and Hong Kong will now be able to take advantage of one of the handiest features as they will now have some live traffic coverage with their respective maps.
While this feature is not new at all, but ever since it commenced tracking live traffic conditions in 2008, Google Maps has continuously added more and more locations to the service so that you can plan accordingly around hairy gridlocks and untimely commuting routes and have an accurate estimate as to the length of time it takes for you to get to your office from your current position.
Google’s team has dedicated their fair share of effort to expand the number of covered locations. The features unveiled in Google Maps uses real-time traffic data to tell you how long it will take you to get from point A to point B. Without that feature, every ride would probably take 20 minutes longer than you anticipated, depending on the time of day and conditions on the road.
According to the Google Maps team, their latest collaboration has resulted in traffic condition coverage being made available for Norway, New Zealand, and Hong Kong, to go along with the United States and 13 other European countries.
By the way, a major part of the coverage area has to do with people participating in “crowdsourcing” their location data when they are driving somewhere. So, do not be shy, hit-up your Maps medium of choice, drop the traffic layer into place and feast your eyes on the manifestation of urban sprawl.
Users can toggle the live traffic coverage by selecting ‘Traffic’ from the dropdown menu in the top-right corner of the map. Using a color-coded caption, with green meaning that the traffic is moving fast, you can see what the activity is like on the streets before you embark into the frenzied world. Below is an example of what traffic is currently like in Central, Hong Kong, near Victoria Harbor.
Besides, it is nice to see Google Maps feature available on an Android-powered smartphone being updated in order to keep up with the Joneses – the latest version of iOS in particular. In an example taken from a nifty iPhone, you can see that the Auckland-Kumeu Motorway and other nearby highways are currently pretty traffic-laden.
When you use Google Maps on your mobile device, it gives constant updates to the company on your progress. The Lat Long blog points out, too, that if your in parts unknown as far as Google Maps live traffic coverage goes, you can contribute to Google Navigation or Google Maps for Mobile while traveling and share information with your fellow travelers. Google then crunches all of that data to accurately predict traffic conditions in near real-time.