OREANDA-NEWS. January 20, 2009. Yandex.Traffic is now available for GPS navigation. Users of the navigation programs Autosputnik and Mobile Navigator can now plan their routes based on the information about traffic jams and clear roads.

The Yandex.Traffic Analytical Center sends traffic information to navigation programs installed on mobile devices and navigators with Internet access. The navigation program shows the quickest route avoiding traffic jams. Traffic information is provided free of charge, users have to pay only for internet connection.

“Traffic jams have become some kind of a natural disaster for people in big cities,” says Pavel Goldin, head of the Yandex.Traffic Analytical Center. “Navigation programs that do not consider traffic conditions, cannot solve an important problem: they do not show the quickest way to the destination point. We offer extensive traffic information in more than twenty cities in Russia and Ukraine that can be used by navigation software programs.”

"When we were creating this service together with Yandex.Traffic, we tried to make it not only user-friendly, but also wallet-friendly. We use a rather compact format to transmit traffic and routing data: mobile bills of Autosputnik users shouldn’t go up,” says Andrey Kouznetsov, head of Navigation Systems. “The future for navigation systems lies in products that are strongly connected with the world and that enable users to orientate themselves, in every sense of this word, while driving. Yandex.Traffic helps us to move in that direction.”

The Yandex.Traffic service is constantly increasing the number of sources for traffic information. In 2008, Yandex purchased information agency Smilink. Currently, Yandex.Traffic receives traffic information from partners and users of mobile Yandex.Maps. Now, users of navigation systems can join in to draw traffic jams and clear roads.

Traffic situation is available for monitoring not only on navigation systems, but also on personal computers at maps.yandex.ru, or on mobile devices, either at pda.maps.yandex.ru or after downloading free Yandex.Maps mobile application.

A list of cities where navigation systems can receive traffic information from Yandex.Traffic, is available at yaprobki.ru/partners/#software. Yandex invites Navigation software developers to join the program at offer-navi@yaprobki.ru.