Here in NYC, most of us commute by subway, train, or bus. Sure, many brave souls do take on the traffic and the challenge of finding a free parking space. But most people I know stay off the road. Many other cities don't have 24-hour public transportation on a wide scale, so commuting by car is the only way to go. Of course, this causes quite a lot of traffic. And it's just getting worse. Better highway planning is in the works, but we need a solution now.

Enter the TrafficGauge (pictured below), now serving LA/Orange counties, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Seattle. (Coming soon to Chicago.) It's a relatively inexpensive device ($79.95 plus subscription fees) that tracks traffic slowdowns on major freeways, updating every four minutes. You can view a on-screen map and see which roads to avoid, and which roads are less congested.

You can get this service on your cell phone in the above areas, as well as San Diego. A free Desktop PC version is available in many more cities, so you can check before you leave home or work.

Traffic receivers are available with many GPS device makers, including Magellan and Garmin, which use FM radio frequencies to receive and transmit traffic data. These devices come at a higher cost, but they cover all 50 states, rather than a select few.

So why is the TrafficGauge only available in select cities? Founder Ryan Peterson uses data from a network of wire-loop detectors that lie underneath roadways and sense automobile movement. Unfortunately many of these sensors break down and remain unfixed.

"Forty percent of all loop detectors are broken, and we don't want to launch a product unless the infrastructure meets our expectation," Peterson recently told the Christian Science Monitor.

Read PCMag's GPS reviews, including our current favorite, the Garmin nuvi 360.