Traffic police to notify diversions, restrictions, alerts on Google Maps
EASE OF TRAVEL Cops will intimate Google about traffic restrictions on certain roads during an event, political rally and these stretches will be marked with dotted lines on Google Maps
NEWDELHI: Delhi Traffic Police and Google Maps have teamed up to provide commuters live alerts on road restrictions on days when processions, sports events or political rallies take up major space on Delhi roads.
An experiment, which started nearly three months ago, has come in handy. Based on the traffic police’s inputs, Google Maps successfully diverted many nondestined commuters on congestion prone days to alternate routes.
Special commissioner of police (Traffic) Dependra Pathak said they are using Google Maps to manage traffic in central Delhi between January 23 and 26. Traffic movement in the area may be stalled multiple times because of key events like Asean summit and Republic Day. “This method of relaying advisories in real- time will help us in better service delivery and public facilitation as a good percentage of people plan their travel with the help of Google Maps. So if they are warned about the no go areas, it makes the job easy for us,” said Pathak.
On how the system works, Pathak said that conventionally Google Maps show the shortest route for a commuter to reach the destinations. In the normal course, he added, live traffic conditions are denoted in different colours. For instance, green represents a normal flow of traffic, yellow represents slow traffic, red indicates congestion and dark red indicates nearly stopped traffic thus helping the commuter to take a call on whether to take or avoid a certain route.
“However, on days such as the upcoming events, without us intimating Google, a stretch which is blocked for normal traffic would be shown as empty encouraging the commuter to take it only to find that he or she would not be allowed there upon reaching. This could be misleading and this is where our advisories sent to Google Maps will help,” said Pathak.
As per the arrangement with Google, the traffic police will send an email with the information on the restrictions and the timings when these would be imposed. “The information will be sent early to Google to make changes in the software to send these alerts in real-time the next day, at least an hour before these are put in place,” said Pathak.
Once the tweak is made, a commuter navigating his or her way will find dotted lines on certain roads where normal traffic is not allowed. “So if a significant number of commuters take alternative routes, we have less commuters to deal with at restricted points. If the volume of diverted traffic is high on alternate suggested route, we would come to know through Google again as we will also use Google Maps to study trends and manage deployment around stretches and corridors based on the colour pattern,” said Pathak.
On the tie-up, Google said such initiatives help them in delivering optimal routing for their users. “Our goal is to make Google Maps more accurate and reliable for users in India, and realtime updates — especially for traffic routing — are a big part of this effort. We also work closely with authorities like the Delhi Traffic Police to incorporate planned disruptions into Maps, such as road closures and oneways during festivals and other public events. This helps deliver optimal routing for our users, while easing the work of traffic management authorities. We look forward to collaborating closely with other traffic authorities across the country,” said a Google spokesperson.