NEW DELHI: All India Radio is extending nationwide a service on its FM channels soon for motorists to get information about traffic jams, accidents, congestion and even weather information about the national highway they are driving on.

The service ‘Highway ki Baatein’ has run successfully on a test basis on Delhi-Jaipur highway, and AIR DG Fayyaz Sheheryar told radioandmusic/com that this will be soon extended upto Coimbatore and ultimately go upto the southern-most tip in Kerala.

The service is expected to be stretched to 13 highways covering more than 2,500 km on national highway corridors.

In fact, he said it is being extended to some major highway corridors passing through Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Odisha, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

These stretches approved by the World Bank in its support to Road Transport include Delhi-Chandigarh, Bhopal-Indore, Lucknow-Gorakhpur, Nagpur-Raipur, Mumbai-Pune, Ahmedabad-Vadodara, Chennai-Bengaluru, CuttackPuri and Kolkata-Asansol.

In this `highway advisory system (HAS)', Radio jockeys share traffic and weather conditions every half-an-hour during peak hours.

The information collected from commuters, concessionaires, patrol vehicles, toll plazas and traffic marshals is transmitted to HAS control centre using mobile applications, telephones and sensors.

The information is used to generate alerts and sent for broadcasting by AIR. Twenty-two bulletins are issued daily.

Sheheryar said it was expected that this may also help avoid road mis-haps and traffic jams.

He said that since radio listening is most prevalent while driving, it was natural that such a service should be introduced to help the commuter.