I didn't know that you're colorblind- what kind do you have?

Shared with traffic team.

Me personally? 

Deuteranopia, IIRC. (affects differentiating red-green of similar 'brightness')

Thanks! 

Hey Barry- I got a response from them:

"The problem is that we cannot use our normal green (which is
distinguishable from yellow) in the UK because it blends into the roads
(which are also green). While we hope to eventually find a combination that
works for everyone, we don't have any brilliant quick color fix - we spent
quite some time looking for color combinations that worked."

So if you actually come up with a decent combination, let us know. 

For me at least I dont there would be a problem telling it apart from the map, due to 
the 'framing' or borders around the traffic lines. Its more telling the lines 
themselves apart. 


So the 'orange' on the screenshot above, is that the 'yellow' or 'red'
http://local.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=61455
The green is fine (for me, but others have it more sevare) in itself - Ie its clearly 
green. Its the 'orange' that doesnt stand out, from the green. 

I'm guessing its 'yellow' and there is another red, that have yet to find - will try 
to catch it during 'rush hour'. 

On the Google Maps group have seen suggested a 'hatched' pattern, but I guess that 
might not work well for dipicting very short sections that changes along its length. 

The base maps themselves seem to work well in that most of the colours are 
contrasting - I guess just got used to the red/green road colours themselves. 

(sorry probabyl not explaining it all that well - I have to sort of figure out the 
intention not what I see ;)

Ah since the last message, have tried it out on the real Maps site, which shows key :)

I've made a mockup 
http://www.nearby.org.uk/google/images/traffic_mock.jpg
which used a more luminous (ie brighter) yellow - which certainly stands out for me. 
have also drawn on some red just to see what it would be like ;)
(ignore the yellow dots all over the map - just a crude swash with the colour replacer tool) 

For the green isnt really important, its the yellow/red need to be able to see. Ok its kinda strange that it 
(in the mockup) goes yellow-green-red in brightness - which is not the logicial order (so grayscale doesnt 
work) 

Maybe I am blowing it out of proportion, its just frustrating to get UK traffic, but not being able to use 
it :(

Maybe could just use borders to highlight the toublespots?
http://www.nearby.org.uk/google/images/traffic_mock2.jpg

I've pinged the internal thread with your mocks.

Sometimes I wonder why I check the gmaps for traffic, I can only fire it up and go
ask a coworker to tell me if it's red or green.

I love how the super slow traffic is black with the red stripe through it.  Maybe
10-25mph can be a yellow with a black line through it (similar to that of caution tape).

I have this exact problem!

I have much difficulty telling the lowest speed and highest speed traffic info apart.
 I have to turn down the brightness and contrast of my red channel to 0 (which turns
red black) to see the difference between the two.  One option is to simply use the
color black for 'slow'.  Black, yellow and green seem good to me!

TrafficMaster's site uses coloured arrows - but they have the traffic speed as a 
number in the arrow, so it still works for colour blind users.  They also only show 
traffic where it's below normal speed, meaning you don't clutter the map with 
whatever that colour is you're using for "flowing freely" :-)

I have to try really hard to see the red. Just show slow and bad traffic. No need to 
highlight fast traffic. Fast traffic should not be highlighted.

Though this thread is old, I found it because the problem persists.  It is nearly
impossible for me to tell the difference.  I can tell just fine on MSN's maps because
they use a darker red - what I think is closer to a maroon color.  It also looks like
there's some dithering, at least in the key.  The solution could not only be
color-based but texture-based.

As for completely ignoring "green" traffic, there might be problems if there is no
traffic flow at all, in the case of a detour or construction.

Regardless, this makes the traffic feature worthless.  I have a G1, so God help me if
I have to use it on the road.  It's not like we're entirely blind and need a whole
new interface.  It could be as simple as adding an "alternative coloring" checkbox by
the speed key.

Changing status of "Accepted" issues to "Acknowledged", to clarify their 
state.

We may not be able to resolve all bugs or fulfill all feature requests, but 
we do thank you for filing them, and we will continually revisit all 
acknowledged issues and evaluate their feasibility. Thanks!

I keep asking whether it would be feasible to have "fast" traffic in Blue.

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I've been wondering about this for a really long time. I too am colorblind and have a really hard time distinguishing the 2, but there are certain times when it is more difficult than others. Namely, when the red and green are not near each other. When I see an expressway that is all "red" or all "green", I don't know which it is, but if one goes from red to green, then usually I can tell the hue change. Unfortunately, the spots of the map I may need are often either all good or all bad, and it's hard to tell which it is.
Another helpful adjustment would be to make the highlighted lines a bit wider. When they are so thin, it's very hard to pick up on hue differences, if they were thicker, it'd be a it easier.

I suppose how that V3 supports 'styled' maps, this FR could morph into adding styling options to the traffic overlay. 

Then the mashup developer is free to choose colours, and could offer alternative colour schemes themselves :)

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I'm from Italy and I was happy to see "traffic" feature has been added to my city map: Bologna.
Sadly I'm color blind for green-yellow, with current colors (or without an option to use a universal color scheme), the traffic layer is quite useless to me.
I have 2 colorblind colleagues here in my office, and asking them to try the map layer, both couldn't see differences in green-yellow shades.
Quoting wikipedia:
"About 8 percent of males, but only 0.5 percent of females, are color blind in some way or another."

I think it's unwise to add such a feature throughout the world without thinking about a problem that make the same feature useless to millions of users, and not fixing it ASAP since you don't want "adding more options and checkboxes" to save your clean UI.
If you prefer, you can put this option on google accounts settings, so colorblind people could just check an optional checkbox saying "I'm colorblind, please apply a universal color scheme to ALL google suite apps".
This way you can also collect some new detail to profile users, making happy your marketing-dataminers guys =)

If you don't fix this issue, I can only think 2 things:
1) Google maps project (and perhaps whole Google company) is ruled by a female-only staff, 0.5% is quite a low percentile so probably no one of you noticed the problem in beta stage

2) You hate so much M. Zuckerberg to use color he can't see. Causing problems to millions of other users is an insignificant side effect.

Ok, I'm joking, but before some bored color blind journalist starts writing "G is Evil because wants color blind people dying stuck in city traffic", please fix this issue for all of us.
My2c

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First comment on this is in 2008 and we are now 2013, still no colorblind option?
Is it that difficult to have an option to change green in blue?

The new look GMaps appears to have attempted to address the issue through the use of different length dashes for fast-ish and slow-ish; unfortunately I think the new colours for fast and slow (still solid lines, not dashed) are possibly even worse than the old ones!

Latest update to the Maps app on my phone, and it would appear to Maps on the web as well, has now fully tilted the traffic indicators against me. Traffic that was flowing normally used to be a darker green, but now it's a more yellowish green, which blends in too much with the yellow and even light orange on the map. Coupled with thinner lines next to the yellow-orange lines used to simply indicate major freeways and yellow lines to indicate simple roads, I feel like Maps, especially the app, has become less useful to me.

I get that Google doesn't want to clutter things with more menu options and whatnot, but saying they want to keep things simple while there has been plenty of requests over the years for a better setup for colorblind users is rather annoying.