Google Maps Lane Guidance Feature Makes For a Handy Travel Companion
Indian roads always remain packed with vehicles. These busy roads notice honking and screaming on working days as well as on weekends. People have to leave home half an hour or an hour in advance to counter traffic. Not any more! Now Indians don’t have to freak out in the traffic jam as Google Maps has launched a lane advisory system in India.
With this new feature, Google Maps gives voice guidance to the users, enabling them to see and hear voice-guided instructions about the alternate lane they should take to avoid traffic. The app is compatible with both Android and iOS and gives lane guidance in around 20 major cities. Google aims to make the app handy and more useful for regular travellers. Director, Producer and Program Management of Google Suren Ruhela clarified the main motive behind updating the app saying –
With the Google Maps app for iPhone/iPad and Android, users will now be able to see and hear voice-guided instructions, signalling which lane they should stay in or move to while in navigation mode.
She further said that the company will continue to upgrade Google Maps for mobile to make it a handy travel companion.
The 20 cities included in the lane guidance feature are Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Mysore, Nagpur, Pune, Surat, Thiruvananthapuram, Vadodara and Visakhapatnam. Drivers in this cities will be able to choose on lane option for easy commute in their mother tongue. The app added Hindi as a default accent last year in July.
The app added a couple of other features as well like turn-by-turn voice guidance, which user’s can get in preferred language. Drivers can change the language from the ‘Language and input’ option. The added feature is a really supportive addition to improving search experience for Indian users.
With traffic the way it is, even in the smallest towns in India, this is quite an initiative by Google Maps to help the hapless stuck in everyday traffic!
