Real time Traffic Report on Google Maps Finally on for Lagos!

I stumbled on this discovery just yesterday while trying to go from Lagos mainland to Ikoyi.

Being a heavy user of Google maps direction, which is also super effective in Nigeria, I however don’t know what led me to the app on my phone that day. This is because my destination was an every day one.

On opening the map app, I saw coloured lines overlapping the regular amber coloured streets. There were red portions of this lines conjoined to green and yellow portions.

These colours corresponds to
Lock jam – deep red
Heavy traffic – red
Slow moving traffic – amber or yellow
Free traffic – light green

So the next time you are leaving home, pop open your Google maps (with Internet connectivity, though) and tap on the menu on the top left and select Traffic… Watch the magic happen!

As much as I appreciate @Gidi_Traffic on twitter and others like them, as well as the traffic radio reports, they do not give one the overall or bird eyes’ view of what is going on. Once in a while, these sources help one make better traffic decisions but with this, you have your on the spot reliable traffic adviser.

I believe Google uses the GPS and WiFi on android phones on the move to report traffic which makes it very reliable because android phones are on every vehicle in town.

Enjoy.