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I wanted an app to do this, and just let me know when it was going to take less than x minutes to get to work/home. The simplest workaround was to bookmark Goog

by chaz 14y ago

I wanted an app to do this, and just let me know when it was going to take less than x minutes to get to work/home. The simplest workaround was to bookmark Google Maps directions, so a single click would tell me the expected time with traffic. I saved it as an Android bookmark as well, so I could single tap it from there, too. This works ok if you're interested in waiting until after traffic, and not "beating" traffic. In my situation, under x minutes meant leaving at 5:30am or after 9;30am, and going home before 3:00pm or after 7:00pm, so that was fine. YMMV. Google Now is somewhere close to this, but I've found it finnicky. Maybe because of my more flexible schedule was throwing off its ability to predict my commutes. I would have preferred something more explicit for work hours, than it guessing based on my GPS'd habits.

dmfdmf 14y ago
I was hoping for a solution that can solve (or at least minimize) the problem between 6-9am and 4-7pm. I think there are a lot of short-lived local effects that can be avoided. For instance near my office is a government agency that quits work right at 5pm on the nose. If I leave one minute before 5pm it is smooth sailing, one minute after 5pm and traffic is snarled until 5:30pm or so. Also, as far as general commuting, the school start times are one major effect since these are local and hard set arrival times for the parents. A smart database could calculate these effects and other cross-interactions that really impact jams so a small change with x% of drivers can prevent avoid the log-jams or backups that take time to dissipate once they form. Perhaps the data could even be used to get schools with interfering traffic patterns to stagger their start time 30 minutes which could have a huge impact.
tellarin 14y ago
Have you seen the Nokia Transit app? I don't use it, so I'm not sure. But from the last time I've played with a demo of it, it seems it might be helpful to you. I think it only runs on Windows Phone though (no website).

by chaz 14y ago

dmfdmf 14y ago

I was hoping for a solution that can solve (or at least minimize) the problem between 6-9am and 4-7pm. I think there are a lot of short-lived local effects that can be avoided. For instance near my office is a government agency that quits work right at 5pm on the nose. If I leave one minute before 5pm it is smooth sailing, one minute after 5pm and traffic is snarled until 5:30pm or so. Also, as far as general commuting, the school start times are one major effect since these are local and hard set arrival times for the parents. A smart database could calculate these effects and other cross-interactions that really impact jams so a small change with x% of drivers can prevent avoid the log-jams or backups that take time to dissipate once they form. Perhaps the data could even be used to get schools with interfering traffic patterns to stagger their start time 30 minutes which could have a huge impact.

tellarin 14y ago

Have you seen the Nokia Transit app? I don't use it, so I'm not sure. But from the last time I've played with a demo of it, it seems it might be helpful to you. I think it only runs on Windows Phone though (no website).