iPhone App Idea: Traffic 8-Ball
I have a lot of iPhone app ideas. Here's one: an application that gives you customized traffic reports.
The iPhone comes with Google Maps built in, which is a great start, but it doesn't go far enough. It's great to be able to see that I-5 is backed up south of Seattle, but the information is too high-level. What if I wanted to know if should try 99 instead of I-5 to get to the airport? Squinting at two red "high traffic" indicators doesn't tell me that 99 is going to be 5 minutes faster.
Have you noticed how if you leave work at 5:00pm, you sometimes get home 20 minutes later than if you leave at 4:55pm? And often you can significantly cut down your time on the road if you avoid 5:00 altogether and start driving home at 6:00 instead.
The interface for the app would be simple. You'd set your common routes beforehand and with a single click you'd see your ETA if you were to leave right then, or get an answer to commonly asked questions, like "520 or I-90?". The resulting data would be a single number or phrase answer, so it could fill the display, making it easier to fumble with while driving.
And of course there would be details if you wanted to dig deeper. Perhaps the app (connected to a web service) would be able to show an ETA graph so you could see when rush hour was starting to die down. Or maybe there could be historical data so you could see "huh, on Thursdays I should leave 10 minutes earlier to beat the rush."
You could also have it SMS you when certain conditions are met, like if your ETA goes above or below 30 minutes.
Pieces of this application can be done today with cell phones or a browser, but it will take an interface like the iPhone's to tie it all together. I look forward to using this app soon.
Comments
agree with thomas' idea - it would be pretty cool if in-car gps systems like tomtom offered a simple voice prompt that mentions upcoming congestion, say, five miles ahead, and offers to build a new route on-the-fly for you