<p>A cofounder of a travel aggregator platform has offered Rs 1 crore to identify Bengaluru’s traffic chokepoints using Google Maps and Artificial Intelligence (AI).</p><p>Prashant Pitti made the offer after spending 2.15 hours to cover 11 km on the night of July 12.</p><p>Posting on X and LinkedIn, he said he wanted to address the issue rather than make memes about it.</p><p>"I was stuck at one chokepoint at ORR (Outer Ring Road), where I spent 100 minutes struggling to understand why there is no traffic light or cop here!" he wrote.</p><p>Pitti hopes to tackle the issue through technology.</p><p>"Very recently, in April 2025, Google Maps started sharing Road Management Insight — city-level data in Big Query format. Using Google data and satellite imagery, we can map all the chokepoints and their timings in a month for the traffic department to address. I am willing to spend Rs 1 crore by funding 1-2 senior machine learning (ML) and AI engineers, and covering Google Maps API calls, satellite imagery, and GPUs," he said.</p>.<p>He wants to begin once the "Bengaluru Traffic Police (BTP) and the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) open their raw feeds or API access and name a team committed to acting on the insights we generate".</p><p>Pitti urged social media users to tag BTP and BBMP officials and invited ML and AI engineers to contact him.</p><p>Former Bengaluru city police commissioner MN Reddi responded, asking Pitti to get in touch.</p><p>"If someone's making an effort to solve the problem, I would like to help. My years of experience in the field could be insightful," he told DH.</p><p>'Attention farming'</p><p>A senior traffic police officer dismissed the post as "attention farming".</p><p>"Do you think my officers and I are unaware of Bengaluru's chokepoints? The problem, especially at night, is due to the ongoing metro construction. We are often asked to divert traffic, but to where? Do people really believe we are not already looking into these problems? It is easy to suggest solutions sitting behind a keyboard," he told this newspaper.</p>
<p>A cofounder of a travel aggregator platform has offered Rs 1 crore to identify Bengaluru’s traffic chokepoints using Google Maps and Artificial Intelligence (AI).</p><p>Prashant Pitti made the offer after spending 2.15 hours to cover 11 km on the night of July 12.</p><p>Posting on X and LinkedIn, he said he wanted to address the issue rather than make memes about it.</p><p>"I was stuck at one chokepoint at ORR (Outer Ring Road), where I spent 100 minutes struggling to understand why there is no traffic light or cop here!" he wrote.</p><p>Pitti hopes to tackle the issue through technology.</p><p>"Very recently, in April 2025, Google Maps started sharing Road Management Insight — city-level data in Big Query format. Using Google data and satellite imagery, we can map all the chokepoints and their timings in a month for the traffic department to address. I am willing to spend Rs 1 crore by funding 1-2 senior machine learning (ML) and AI engineers, and covering Google Maps API calls, satellite imagery, and GPUs," he said.</p>.<p>He wants to begin once the "Bengaluru Traffic Police (BTP) and the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) open their raw feeds or API access and name a team committed to acting on the insights we generate".</p><p>Pitti urged social media users to tag BTP and BBMP officials and invited ML and AI engineers to contact him.</p><p>Former Bengaluru city police commissioner MN Reddi responded, asking Pitti to get in touch.</p><p>"If someone's making an effort to solve the problem, I would like to help. My years of experience in the field could be insightful," he told DH.</p><p>'Attention farming'</p><p>A senior traffic police officer dismissed the post as "attention farming".</p><p>"Do you think my officers and I are unaware of Bengaluru's chokepoints? The problem, especially at night, is due to the ongoing metro construction. We are often asked to divert traffic, but to where? Do people really believe we are not already looking into these problems? It is easy to suggest solutions sitting behind a keyboard," he told this newspaper.</p>