That’s So Akamai!

 

Waking up in the early hours of the morning to get to work or school is hard enough. Add the unknown traffic conditions and the possibility of spending hours in traffic because you turned right instead of left, and you’re back in a nightmare from the night before.

What if you could wake up from this nightmare?

GoAkamai (www.goakamai.org) is a new website by the Hawaii State Department of Transportation and the City & County of Honolulu DOT Services that provides transportation information. Not only do they provide real-time traffic updates and alerts, but they also provide public transportation information, links to flight times and carpool services, and even surf and weather reports.

Basically, it’s your one-stop resource for your daily commute, whether you’re off to school or work, or choosing a spot to catch some waves.

The real-time traffic features include lane closures or road work schedules, pictures from traffic cameras, so you can view just how congested a certain route may be, as well as maps that depict traffic conditions by color-coding roads as green, red, yellow, or black, meaning no congestion, heavy, moderate, or stop and go, respectively. These features are all accessible from any smartphone (Android, BlackBerry, or iPhone).

Currently, the real-time traffic feature is only available for the island of Oahu, but it may be expanded to the other islands in the future. However, public transportation information is not limited to Oahu and is provided for Maui, Kaui, and the Big Island.

GoAkamai makes public transportation less of a pain. Instead of walking blind to a bus stop, with no idea of when your bus comes, before you leave you can just type in your location into TheBusHEA feature on the home page, which will tell you the bus stop closest to you as well as the times for each bus that will stop there. This feature can also be accessed through smartphones.

Do yourself a favor and make checking GoAkamai a habit either before or while you’re on the road. You will never again take that left turn when you should have taken a right to avoid that road construction with GoAkamai.