Crowdsourcing Visual Road Traffic Conditions

Have you been stuck in a jam that crawled to a complete standstill on an expressway? It could have been because of an accident one of the lanes, or more often than not, it is because of a jam on the lane in the opposite direction. (Clarification: ‘cuz vehicles slow down to look at the accident..) If that’s the case, listening to the public radio stations might not help you effectively guess which route to take to work. A new crowdsourced traffic information update feature in the mobile app Foyage allows you to immediately see in real-time the actual traffic condition on various roads, as uploaded by your fellow users.

Here are two screenshots of the application:

Reporting local traffic conditions.

And if you want to check out all the traffic updates:

View list of traffic updates submitted by fellow users.

Though giant Google is crowdsourcing traffic data as well, such real-time traffic data is not available in Singapore and only has partial coverage outside some 30 major metropolitan areas in the US. Digital map maker, Navteq is also trying to do the same.

However, the type of traffic data that Foyage is providing is different from that of Google and Navteq. The latter two use your GPS signals and gets regular updates (anonymously) from every phone that opts into the system regarding your location and speed. In so doing, they are able to aggregate all the data and show which roads have fast moving traffic and which aren’t. This is definitely very attractive and will be highly useful to drivers. Unfortunately, Singapore drivers don’t have this to make use of yet.

Locally, the best we have is an iPhone app that allows you to view the EMAS traffic cameras. But these cameras are only mounted at certain points around the island whereas Foyage allows anyone, anywhere to upload a picture of the traffic conditions.

For now, the traffic feature in Foyage is available only on Blackberry. iPhone and Android users have to wait.

Image of the traffic jam above is in India. It is courtesy of N-O-M-A-D.

Disclosure: I am an investor in Xsago, the company behind Foyage.

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