MapTrip Launches New Megablocker Service in Response to German Infrastructure Crisis
Germany’s deteriorating road and bridge infrastructure will be the biggest challenge facing road transport in the years ahead. It is hitting the logistics and transport industry particularly hard, as well as every company operating trucks that depends on reliable route calculation, planning and execution.
More and more often, the message is: nothing works anymore. “Germany, your bridges – an ongoing disaster,” as German broadcaster ZDF aptly put it in its Länderspiegel programme recently.
The industry is not only at breaking point; it is suffering tangible economic damage. Particularly serious are truck-only driving bans triggered by the strain on ageing road surfaces.
These closures are not taken into account by any standard navigation or traffic software. For drivers and dispatchers, they remain invisible in route planning until the vehicle reaches the closure, with costly consequences for planning, deadlines and availability. Fines are also not uncommon.
We call these undocumented driving bans “Megablockers”, and we are responding to this crisis in the logistics industry with a new service that is now available in all MapTrip applications.
To achieve this, we have taken an unconventional approach by introducing a nationwide editorial information service that is unique in Germany. An editorial team continuously researches temporary truck closures on German motorways, verifies their relevance, and integrates them into the map data. The information is then automatically made available across MapTrip’s navigation and route planning services. Affected road sections are taken into account during route calculation, and suitable detours are generated automatically.
To the best of our knowledge, MapTrip is currently the only provider to capture temporary truck-only road closures nationwide through an editorial process and integrate them directly into navigation and route planning.
We cannot solve the infrastructure crisis, but we can help the industry plan more reliably.
The new Megablocker Service is available immediately at no additional cost in all MapTrip applications, including our route planner at maps.maptrip.de, all Android apps, including MapTrip on the Google Play Store, and all integrated services powered by MapTrip.