Bengaluru joins hands with Google to ease traffic woes
Bengaluru's Traffic Police has tied up with tech giant Google to resolve traffic woes in the city. A pilot project to optimize the traffic signals using data from Google has already started, and the move will impact lots of commuters daily. To recall, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June had set a 40-month deadline for the state government to decongest traffic in the city.
Why does this story matter?
Bengaluru has become the first city in India whose traffic police department has partnered with Google for traffic management. This is not surprising considering the city known as the Silicon Valley of India, is considered to be a tech hub of the country. The roads of Bengaluru are congested because of the huge number of vehicles and a solution is needed urgently.
'Signal waiting time for commuters has been reduced'
Describing his department's collaboration with Google, Bengaluru Joint Commissioner for Traffic, BR Ravikanthe Gowda said, "We are proud to be partnered with Google to work on reducing traffic congestion. This will impact millions of commuters in their daily life." "We have started a pilot project with Google to optimize the traffic lights configuration. This has reduced signal waiting time for commuters," he added.
Google's AI tracks driving trends across the city
The top cop claimed that Google uses artificial intelligence (AI) to track city-wide driving trends and recommends revised plans to the traffic police every day. He also said that the tech firm's data has reduced the waiting time for commuters on the road by 20% on average. This aids in saving time and fuel, and also prevents unnecessary traffic congestion.
Traffic police has launched speed limits on Google Maps
Gowda believes that the optimization of signals throughout the city will affect at least one crore vehicles. "Google will show us real-time live road closures across the city so that the commuters can keep informed about the disruption. We have also launched speed limits on Google Maps and this will help us to deal with over-speeding vehicles in the city, digitally," he added.
