Last year MapQuest introduced traffic-sensitive routing into our hugely popular free navigation apps for Android and iPhone, automatically optimizing your route based on traffic conditions when you begin navigation.

With our latest releases of the flagship MapQuest apps now in the App Store and Google Play, we can now check traffic conditions every few minutes as you traverse your route, and adjust on-the-fly. You don’t need to do anything: if congestion is detected and we can find a faster way around it, we’ll re-route automatically and notify you using a simple spoken instruction. You can keep your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.

We think drivers will love the benefits of this feature: saving time and gas, reducing aggravation, and finding alternate routes even in familiar areas (try it on your commute!). And if you prefer to just crank the tunes and wait for the congestion to clear, you can easily disable traffic-based routing using Settings in either app.

Our traffic-based routing is based on INRIX data. INRIX collects more real-time traffic info from more sources than anyone else in the industry, including crowd-sourced data from commercial fleet and consumer vehicles as well as GPS-enabled mobile devices. MapQuest’s real-time traffic coverage includes over 200,000 miles of roads in North America, which is essentially all major roads in medium-to-large cities. And the coverage is even better during rush hour.

Download our free iPhone or Android app and start avoiding traffic snarls today – then tell us on Twitter or Facebook what you did with the time you saved!

Have you ever been sitting in grid-lock traffic, wishing that you knew that secret route to navigate you around the accident, construction or whatever else is causing the delay? Well, good news, the latest version of the free MapQuest app for iPhone is now your insider’s guide to just that! While we’ve had traffic updates for several years, now when you punch in your route the app quickly checks the current traffic conditions and will automatically route you around any major backlogs. What’s more, if a road is closed due to construction, flooding, snow, (zombies!?), etc., the app will be sure to avoid it as well. No more following detours wondering if there is a better way, we’ll find you the best way around it all.

Helpful hints in the list view of your directions are another great addition. These maneuver notes help you find your turn or destination by providing information about landmarks nearby. The app will offer up extra advice such as “Main St. is just past King St.” or “Bruller’s Pizza is on the corner”, giving you vital context when in the thick of navigating an unfamiliar area.

On the less practical, but more fun side of things, we also made it a bit easier to change your position icon. Just tap your current icon, click ‘Change Icon’ and then you can choose a robot, tornado, unicorn, airplane, football or whatever icon makes you smile when you open the app.

Lastly, for the millions of you lucky folks that already have an iPhone 5, our app is now officially optimized for your larger screen. Great news because that means more map!

We hope you enjoy all these updates. If you don’t have the app already, get it for free from the App Store. If you do, please rate it via the App Store on your phone to tell us what you love or what you think we can improve – we always appreciate your comments!