Google Maps Adds Australian Traffic Information

Google Maps has incorporated traffic information for Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, meaning that as well as planning your journey you can make an educated guess at how many snags you’ll run into on the way.

The new service, which also covers some outlier areas (Central Coast and Wollongong for Sydney, Geelong for Melbourne, and the Gold and Sunshine Coasts for Brisbane), can be switched on by clicking the ‘Traffic’ button near the top left of Google Maps after researching a route, adding colour coding for slow-going areas.

The same data is also included on Google Maps for Mobile, though bear in mind the messy legal status of phone GPS devices. In that context, using a Suna device might be less risky, though Google’s system for tracking the movement of devices using its service to update the traffic information sounds cool. (Google is also drawing information from Suna as well.)

Overall, it’s a nice addition — can we now have some public transport integration for Sydney and Melbourne as well please?

Get there faster with traffic information on Google Maps [Official Google Australia Blog]