Navigation app puts beacons in tunnels

SAN FRANCISCO — The popular navigation app Waze is putting a new twist on the phrase “tunnel vision.” It’s trying to ensure that drivers don’t lose their way when their GPS signal disappears in tunnels.

Waze plans to keep drivers connected by installing low-cost, battery-powered beacons that will transmit to smartphones and tablets in tunnels that the company has in its database, covering about 7,500 miles around the world.

The beacons can maintain map connections as long as the drivers turn on their Bluetooth signal.

The beacons were turned on last week in two Pittsburgh tunnels, Fort Pitt and Liberty, and another in Israel, where Waze was founded before Google bought it in 2013 for $969 million.

Waze is trying to persuade all tunnel operators, mostly government agencies, to buy and install the beacons.

Plans already are being drawn up to install the Waze beacons in tunnels in Rio de Janeiro and Paris, too.