Google Maps in India now includes real-time traffic information for 12 cities

I honestly can’t think back far enough to remember the days when people had to rely on paper maps to navigate to places, but I can still appreciate how the combination of Google Maps and the Google-owned Waze makes life much easier than ever before. The one dedicated GPS I ever owned couldn’t even beat my Nexus 5 because it’s arrival estimates always seemed completely off-base. Unsurprising really, because unlike Google Maps, it didn’t have real-time information about traffic density on the roads my route would take me on. Now, Maps users in 12 cities in India will be able to enjoy the same real-time traffic information we have stateside.

Google made the announcement in a post on its Google India blog today, saying that real-time traffic information will now display directly on the map in the following 12 cities: Kolkata, Coimbatore, Lucknow, Surat, Thiruvananthapuram, Indore, Ludhiana, Visakhapatnam, Nagpur, Kochi, Madurai, and Bhopal.

The addition will be familiar to anyone who’s seen it in other locales. Routes on your map are color-coded based on their current traffic conditions – green means there are no traffic delays, orange indicates a medium amount of traffic and red alerts you to heavier traffic congestion. The turn-by-turn navigation mode bases its arrival estimate on the conditions along your route, and updates in real-time as conditions change. The update should be rolling out to devices now.