Managing traffic

One of the biggest problems facing commuters in our major cities, especially Colombo and Kandy, is heavy traffic. Traffic speeds in rush hour Colombo is down to almost 8 Km/h and it is predicted the speed will come down to around 3 Km/h in a few years. Heavy traffic wastes our time, fuel and energy and does no one any good.

The one thought that enters our mind while being stuck in traffic is often "isn't there another, traffic-free road that I should have taken?" There is often no way that you could know about roads with less traffic congestion, although some radio stations occasionally give traffic updates about certain roads in Colombo an suburbs. The other method is usually word of mouth, where a co-worker or friend tells you about a nightmarish traffic condition on the road he or she is taking. But apart from these methods, there is no real-time traffic information. There is one smartphone app that gives traffic information relaying on user feedback, but this is still a work in progress.

Predictions

Google Maps has been available for Sri Lanka for quite some time now and it usually gives remarkably accurate predictions for travel times from A to B. However, these are based on the assumption of having normal (i.e. fast moving) traffic. Up to now, there was no real time traffic info on Google Maps. Now Google has rectified this shortcoming and activated real-time traffic information for Sri Lanka with useful congestion data for Colombo and other locations.

This is great news for motorists, but there are some caveats. First, the driver should have a smartphone that can access and display Google Maps. These days, any smartphone can do that. Second, the driver should be in an area with a 3G or 4G mobile data signal. Again, this should pose no problems in the major cities which have blanket 3G and 4G coverage. The maps are thus available for any location where there is mobile data and slow-moving traffic.

The Google map will indicate routes in green color for those where the traffic is moderate while heavy traffic is indicated by red colour. To make use of this facility, commuters need to access Google maps and select "Traffic" from the menu to commence the traffic route guide. Another rather helpful feature is that the Google map displays road construction zones as well. These can often lead to traffic snarls, so users can be warned beforehand.

Experience

Since it is available on Google maps for both mobiles and desktops, travellers will be able to check current traffic conditions on their desktop at the office and choose a less traffic-chocked street before heading out to the car park. The best part of the experience is that it will be a collective effort of smartphone users - if Google Maps is used for mobile with GPS enabled on your phone, then Google Maps starts accumulating data on travellers necessary for traffic estimations. When a driver chooses to enable Google Maps with My Location, the phone sends anonymous bits of data back to Google describing how fast the vehicle is moving. "When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions," says Google.

Google aggregates this data and sends it back to Google Maps traffic layers. When Google Maps for mobile is turned on, the resulting traffic reports are fairly accurate versions of what goes on, on our roads.

Smartphone

Does Google or your mobile operator know where you are? Are there any other privacy concerns? While commercial vehicle tracking software does exist, this is not a tracking system, but rather a collective traffic reporting system that has already been tried and tested many other countries. In any case, to address privacy and security concerns, when a lot of people report data from the same area, Google combines data together to make it hard to tell one smartphone from another. Google apparently deletes your trip data once the trip under review is terminated. In case you are worried about any privacy issues, you can always turn this feature off.

With Google already engaged in collecting Street View data for 3-D maps of the length and breadth of Sri Lanka, this will be an ideal navigation aid that can inform drivers in real time about traffic conditions on the roads they intend to take. It is an ideal journey planner. If more drivers opt to make use of this feature, it has the potential to spread out the traffic evenly across the available roads and thus make all roads more accessible. Most people stick to a familiar road day after day without considering another route that might be less congested and this might convince them to take the plunge. One has to try the unknown and the unfamiliar to make new discoveries, after all.

Objective

However, this is only a partial solution to our traffic woes. The authorities want to discourage owner-drivers from coming to the city of Colombo alone, without at least two other passengers.

A penalty for those who do not engage in such 'car-pooling' has already been proposed to be implemented from the latter part of next year.

The shared ride service Uber, which has already entered Sri Lanka, has shown that this could be financially rewarding for both the driver and his/her passengers. The concept might work in Sri Lanka if marketed properly.

The best solution is still not to drive to work altogether. But this is easier said than done. The best alternative is to build a world class public transport system (trains, bus rapid transit, taxis - not three wheelers) that rivals any such system in Asia.

If there is a good, efficient, clean, public transport network that covers the entire city and the suburbs, most people would not want to get into their vehicles except on holidays. That should be the city and traffic planners' ultimate objective.