OREANDA-NEWS. June 26, 2008. Yandex completes the first phase of the Traffic 2.0 project, the company’s initiative to create user-generated traffic maps. Users can now track clear traffic in Moscow at the Yandex.Maps website. Starting today, drivers in dozens of cities across Russia and Ukraine start feeding and benefiting from live traffic information.

Yandex announced the launch of Traffic 2.0 in Moscow in March. Drivers in Moscow equipped with GPS devices started to inform each other about current traffic conditions in the real time mode, and create the city’s traffic maps together. Initially, traffic information was available to anyone, who would install the Yandex.Maps mobile application on their mobile devices. During the past few months, thousands of drivers have joined the number of those regularly reporting traffic conditions. Now, the traffic map of Moscow is available at maps.yandex.ru.

Starting today, the new phase of the Traffic 2.0 project is commencing – this time in dozens of cities across Russia and Ukraine. As in Moscow, traffic information in these cities is available only to users of the Yandex.Maps mobile application. User-generated traffic maps will become available at maps.yandex.ru once the number of volunteer drivers reporting traffic conditions reaches critical mass.

“First and foremost, it is our users, who paint the picture of traffic flows, and, in our experience, they are good at it,” says Maria Laufer, head of Yandex.Maps. “We reckon, drivers in other cities will be as enthusiastic about contributing to traffic maps (or maps free of traffic), as drivers in Moscow.”

The Yandex.Maps mobile application now informs about traffic conditions in Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Krasnodar, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Orel, Rostov-on-Don, Ryazan, Samara, Saint Petersburg, Tula, Ufa, Chelyabinsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Kiev, Lviv, Odessa, Kharkiv.

Yandex.Maps is one of the most popular mobile applications in Russia. Since its launch, the program has been downloaded by more than half a million users.