Google Maps provides a great visualization of the live traffic as well as the typical traffic based on historical traffic data - this is a fantastic idea! Routes having heavy congestion are shown in red and dark red.
This is how the traffic looks on a typical Friday evening in Bangalore:
..and this was how it looked when my wife who was visiting Bangalore had to travel from ITPL to the Bangalore City Railway station on a Friday to catch a train at 6:20pm
We booked a Meru Cab a day earlier (there is a
convenience charge of Rs 60 for booking through their call center,
a per kilometre cost of Rs 19.50 after the first 4 kms which cost Rs 80 during day time - a relatively higher price than competitors that elicits higher expectations) that was supposed to arrive at 3:30pm. There wasn't any information from the driver or Meru that the pickup would be delayed. Upon being contacted, the driver promised to be there by 3:45pm but didn't turn up. Meru Cab's tagline is "Rely on us". It should have been "Rely on us to spoil your plans".
This situation was also not unanticipated. To cut a long story short the wife caught the train in the nick of time after experiencing the helplessness of being in a traffic system that takes 2 and half hours to cover 32 kilometers and the helpfulness of strangers who offered help & guidance.
Note to self - check if there is an app that can perform predictive analysis of historical traffic data to estimate time needed to travel from point A to B or else build it.
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