But what about the arterial roads? Sometimes everyone has the same idea to take that shortcut, making traffic that much worse. Today, Google is launching arterial traffic maps in select cities (more will be added as the data becomes available).
Using this information, you can check out main roads and the side streets before heading into gridlock. I live in Atlanta, one of the worst cities in the country in terms of traffic, and this feature will definitely come in handy.
Although getting traffic maps on your desktop is cool, it's most useful when using Google Maps for Mobile, and fortunately, arterial traffic maps are being rolled out to mobile devices too. Even better, if you have a smartphone with GPS capabilities and Google Maps installed, your traffic data, and how fast you are traveling can be sent to Google and used to help improve and update traffic data. As more and more users have GPS capable phones running Google Maps, the information can continue to scale.