Drivers often face long traffic jams on their commute
(Picture: Dave Thompson/PA)Running late but stuck behind roadworks that the GPS didn’t pick up? Soon, that could become a problem of the past for London drivers.
Waze has partnered with Transport for West Midlands in a move that will see the Google-owned navigation app receive data on road closures, construction work, and other delays directly from the road authority. However, this will only work on routes between the Midlands and London.
With Londoners’ average commute time lasting well over an hour, plus the city’s 20 mph limits and myriad cyclists and pedestrians, such information could prove vitally helpful during busy rush hours.
Ru Roberts, Waze UK country manager, said the partnership will allow the company to better support drivers “by sharing reliable data about journey times, advance notice on construction and road closures, and real-time updates on incidents affecting their route”.
Currently, Waze users rely on other users to report traffic disruptions. But, as any Waze driver will know, these flags aren’t always precise or comprehensive, which can make a big difference in a traffic-prone city like London.
The partnership means that drivers likely won’t run into unexpected roadworks any more, which seem to pop up on a daily basis in residential-but-trafficked boroughs like Islington and Hackney.
While apps like Google Maps and TomTom already pick up large traffic disruptions like accidents or even road closures by relying on user driving data, they are so far unable to alert drivers of closures on residential streets, for example.
The data-sharing partnership will flow the other way as well, with Waze sharing data collected from the platform’s users with TfWM. The road authority said this will help it “analyse data across the whole of the highway network to reduce congestion, increase road safety, and speed up journey times.”
Should London’s councils adopt such a partnership with Waze, it will likely go a long way to address the city’s status as the most congested city in Europe.
