'Carmageddon' Drivers Could Find Relief From Crowd-Sourcing GPS App
A major highway shutdown, ominously dubbed "Carmageddon," is about to happen in L.A., where local officials and news agencies fear the worst. A smart GPS app, however, could provide some relief for drivers by tracking traffic conditions and suggesting alternative routes in real time.
Recently at Smarter Tech, we wrote about a new wave of smartphone applications being used to help track and improve transportation networks around the country. In Los Angeles, for example, an application called Biketastic encourages users in the traffic-heavy city to commute by bicycle by calculating optimal routes and biking times. Now, similar smartphone technology might help L.A. residents during the feared shutdown of a major highway—what some are calling "Carmageddon."
Closed routes are highlighted in red.
Over this weekend, a 10-mile stretch of L.A.'s I-405 will be closed for repairs for over 50 hours. Because the highway carries some 500,000 cars during a normal summer weekend, residents are preparing for the worst. Carmageddon Websites have popped up to share information, and officials are advising drivers to stay home.
Despite these preparations, no one quite knows how bad the driving situation could be. NBC has predicted that commutes could take triple the normal time, and the Los Angeles Times anticipates that many of the city's roads will be gridlocked.
Once the shutdown begins, a new application-based project could provide real-time insight into traffic patterns for desperate drivers. Waze, a free GPS application, is joining with L.A.'s local ABC station, KABC, to track traffic and identify problems as they occur.
Unlike other GPS applications, Waze has a social-networking component that tracks what roads its users are on at any given time. This allows the application to follow traffic patterns more quickly and accurately than other methods, like helicopters.
"Because the people input it, we know what's going on on the road, we know about road closures, we know about exits not working, we know about signals not working, things that we can actually affect and improve people's driving," Michal Roman Habdank, a spokesman for Waze.com, told ABC.
Waze users can choose to submit their driving routes anonymously or publicly, with the option to upload photographs of conditions. As traffic issues arise, the application suggests alternate routes using its real-time information about the roads.
Although drivers can't enter text into Waze while their cars are in motion, the application has a passenger mode that lets other people in the car report information. ABC will use information from Waze in its reporting of the L.A. shutdown.
According a recent article in The New York Times, about 180,000 drivers in the Los Angeles area already use Waze, which works on many different smartphone systems, such as iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry. The more users the application has, the more effective it will be in easing gridlock during Carmageddon.
Source: Smarter Technology
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