Madrid has taken a decisive step towards mobility connected to the installation of 2,700 Bluetooth beacons, of which 1,600 have been specifically deployed in the M-30 tunnels. A strategic alliance between Google, Waze, the Madrid City Council, Madrid Calle 30 and ImaSapi that will make the Spanish capital the European city with a greater active network of beacons and the second in the world, behind Sydney.

The measure responds to a practical need: moving through the M-30 can be a challenge, especially when the GPS signal is lost underground. Thus, from now on Waze or Google Maps users, both in Android and iOS, will have precision guided navigation even within the tunnels, provided they have activated bluetooth and grant permits to applications.

The beacons, designed by Waze, are low consumption devices that work with batteries and emit a constant and unidirectional Bluetooth signal. This signal is captured by smartphones and allows you to calculate the location of the vehicle inside the tunnel, facilitating navigation and avoiding errors in outputs or deviations. It is estimated that more than 500,000 drivers circulate daily through the M-30, which makes this technological update a significant advance in terms of safety and efficiency.
And it is that the M-30 has 22 inputs and 24 exits as well as complex sections between bridges where parallel tunnels overlap. For Waze engineers, as Google collects in a statement, displaying a functional system under these conditions “It has been a considerable technical challenge.”

Until now, only some cities in the world have implanted similar solutions in urban infrastructure. Paris has beacons in the tunnels of the Défense and the intent of the Périphérique; New York has digitized tunnels such as Lincoln, Holland or Queens-Midtown. However, the scale of the Madrid project places it as a reference in Europe and an example of collaboration between public and technological institutions.