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Waze cooperates with Jakarta administration to ease congestion
The Jakarta Administration is cooperating with Waze Ltd
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T
he Jakarta Administration is cooperating with Waze Ltd. in the form of information exchange to ease the severe congestion which has blighted the capital city for years.
On Tuesday, Waze Community and Operations vice president Fej Shmuelevitz, program manager Paige Fitzgerald, and Global Communications and Creative Strategy head Julie Mossler held a meeting with acting Jakarta governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama and Transportation Agency head Muhammad Akbar to further discuss the cooperation.
'The cooperation was signed in September 2014, and [this meeting] is the follow up,' said Akbar, as quoted by Antara news agency.
Meanwhile, Fitzgerald said that the information, which would be obtained by Waze from the administration, was the city's traffic conditions, traffic accidents and government activities, which would be transmitted to people through the Waze app.
'Waze will cooperate with the administration to update the city's road conditions so that people can remain active by using alternative routes,' Mossler said, as quoted by Antara.
Mossler further said that Waze, which was acquired by Google Inc. in 2013, had been working with the Brazilian government in similar terms.
Fitzgerald added that the cooperation was part of the Waze's 'smart city' program which intended to help 10 cities all over the world resolve their traffic issues by using the help of technology.
'Jakarta is one of the 10 cities that are the target of our smart city program in the field of traffic flow,' Fitzgerald said.
Meanwhile, Ahok said that the cooperation would help the administration to manage Jakarta's traffic data, which currently could not be managed under one system, and would help the administration save costs in synchronizing its data.
'Even if we spent a trillion to make our own application, people might not use it. [The application] might not work either,' he said. (ask)(+++)
