ChiTown Traffic Tattler

Traffic on the 8s, traffic on the 5s, traffic on the web and traffic on our phones. Lord knows we have more than enough options to find traffic conditions here in Chicago. That is unless you’re looking for traffic conditions on say Racine Avenue between Randolph and Jackson.

Enter Google Maps.

The search engine giant has intorduced a feature that lets users see live traffic info for arterial, non-highway roads. Chicago is among the “selected cities,” which San Francisco, Seattle and New York.

If you’re like me, finding away around the Circle bottleneck is a way of life, but our friend Joe Collins on WBBM’s drive-time traffic reports can’t possibly keep track of every expressway and how State Street might look for would-be commuters looking for a plunge through downtown.

Google Maps also now lets you view traffic patterns for a certain day and time — say Summer Fridays.

The addition that has us at ChiTown Tattler excited is the use of crowdsourcing for traffic conditions. If you use have Google Maps with GPS enabled you can allow the program to send updates about where you are and how fast you’re moving.

OK, so maybe that’s a little too Orwellian.

According to the official Google blog, Maps will combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road at any given time.

“We can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions. We continuously combine this data and send it back to you for free in the Google Maps traffic layers. It takes almost zero effort on your part — just turn on Google Maps for mobile before starting your car — and the more people that participate, the better the resulting traffic reports get for everybody.”

Ars Technia reports that Google knows privacy is a concern, and the company has limited the Maps functionality to those who have chosen to enable it and permanently deletes the start and end locations of each trip.