Google maps added traffic conditions on local streets today. A map of San Francisco shows traffic on South Van Ness near the Blinktag Office as medium, actually the street is rarely congested, it just has a lot of stop lights so you can rarely go “fast” even with no other vehicles.

Freeway traffic had been a feature of google maps for a while, but providing traffic conditions on non-freeways is especially useful for travel within SF as most car trips don’t involve travel on a freeway. San Francisco has removed several freeways in recent years, freeways are useful for getting to/from the city but not as much for travel within the city.

The traffic data is actually crowdsourced from people sharing their location from google maps for mobile, read more on the google blog. I’m not sure if this includes iphone users as we can’t run background apps.

Congratulations to our client The San Francisco Bay View for being named Best of the Bay 2008!  Now 35 years old, the San Francisco Bay Guardian’s annual list of San Francisco’s coolest stuff has yet to include a BlinkTag project – until now!

(Credit where credit is due: we don’t actually write any of the articles, and the BG didn’t say anything about the design.)