Arterial, crowdsourced traffic info comes to Google Maps

You already know how to find the status of traffic on the highway, but what about regular roads? Google has added arterial road information to Google Maps in select cities and has begun using crowdsourced data to provide more live updates.

Highway traffic updates on the Internet are nothing new, but Google Maps has just added a feature that lets users see live traffic info for arterial, non-highway roads. The feature is already available in “selected cities,” which (according to a quick search) includes Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, and New York.

As pointed out on the Google LatLong Blog, people who drive on a daily basis not only want to know the status of the highways, they usually would like to see how the roads around the highways are looking, too. Arterial roads—medium or high-traffic roads that are not highways—now show color indicators depending on the current traffic status, which can be helpful in determining a route on the fly. A search for directions around my area shows that the main roads near me are not lookin’ so hot at the moment.

Read more: arstechnica.com