OREANDA-NEWS. Internet, March 6, 2008. Yandex has launched “Kyiv Traffic”, the first traffic monitoring service in the Ukrainian Internet. Now anyone who drives in Kyiv can check traffic before hitting the road and avoid congestions.

A mobile version of the Kyiv traffic maps is coming soon. Then, Kyiv drivers will have an opportunity to participate in Yandex’s Traffic 2.0 program, a user-generated traffic map project.

Today Yandex.Maps shows traffic on the main routes of two capitals, Kyiv and Moscow. Crowded streets with slow traffic flow are highlighted red and yellow on the map. Moving the cursor to a highlighted segment displays duration and length of a particular congestion. Congestions, just like natural disasters, are rated on a scale from zero to ten. Internet users in Kyiv can see both the congestion rating and the Yandex traffic lights icon, which signals the degree of traffic intensity in their city, on the Yandex’s frontpage.

"Every morning our staffers get stuck in Kyiv traffic and each evening they ponder when they can leave to avoid being stuck on the way again,” says Vyacheslav Pankratov, Director of Technologies of Yandex.Ukraine. “We need this kind of service as much as everyone else in Kyiv, who wants to save their commute time.”

Traffic information is provided by the Druga Smuga information agency.