Next weekend may be a trying time for Los Angeles drivers, as California's highway department shuts

Next weekend may be a trying time for Los Angeles drivers, as California's highway department shuts down a 10-mile stretch of Interstate 405 a major city-center thoroughfare for repairs. But local station KABC and an Israeli technology company see it as an ideal time to try crowd-sourced traffic reporting.
The ABC affiliate will be reporting on the expected traffic snarls using data gleaned from Waze , a free GPS navigation app for smart phones . Unlike other GPS smart-phone apps or standalone GPS devices, Waze's local traffic travel safety tips updates are based on gathering reports from individual users. travel safety tips KABC and Waze's creators are hoping that reports from the approximately 180,000 L.A.-based Waze users will provide insights to this weekend's travel safety tips traffic conditions on nearby local roads areas where California's Department of Transportation doesn't have traditional traffic sensors.
It does represent a creative alternative to more traditional navigation solutions, empowering a mobile geek task force to collectively build the service... But its success will depend travel safety tips on the number of users it attracts and their willingness to take part in reporting map inaccuracies or reporting on real-time incidents.
(I tried Waze in the New York area recently, and for me, our initial findings held true. There aren't a lot of drivers using the smart phone app in NY, andI found that Waze's traffic reports were typically not much better than those from local news radio stations. And using Waze while driving say, to report a local red-light camera or speed trap could land you a ticket from the NYPD for distracted driving .)
Will this weekend's shutdown of I-405 in L.A. be a good test for Waze and usher in a new round of GPS apps for smart phones? Or will dedicated GPS navigators with real-time traffic reports from trusted source shine? (Read about the differences in our Face off: GPS navigator travel safety tips vs. cell-phone navigation so you'll know how to decide between the two options.) And what's your strategy for dealing with traffic in your local area? We'd like to know especially if you live in the City of Angels.