Google announced on the Official Lat Long Blog today that it is expanding the Google Maps live traffic feature first launched in 2008 to cover 130 smaller U.S. cities and the capitals of Panama, Costa Rica, and Colombia. On top of travel time estimates and real-time traffic conditions for the new cities, Google also improved its traffic coverage in a list of other locations including parts of Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. A tutorial of the feature is presented in the demo video below, and you can click here to check out the traffic status in San Jose Costa Rica.

Now the streets of Bogotá, San José, and Panama City and the arterial roads in Kalamazoo (Michigan), Portland (Maine), Tuscaloosa (Alabama) and many more cities will include real-time current traffic conditions as well as estimated travel times. Whether you’re online on your home computer ensuring no unexpected snarls await your drive to the airport or you’ve been stuck behind a line of cars for a few minutes and can ask your friend in the passenger seat to check whether it’ll clear up just around the bend, we hope these updates save you time and stress when getting to your destination.

Source: 9to5Google.com