NAVTEQ, the leading global provider of digital maps, traffic and location data for in-vehicle, portable, and wireless solutions company, today reached the milestone of pedestrians, adding Johannesburg, South Africa as the 100th town NAVTEQ Discover Cities.

Adding to the Johannesburg NAVTEQ Discover Cities is a natural development, given the importance of this city as a major tourist destination in 2010 and beyond. In fact, many newly developed areas and the POI is added to the urban landscape and has been incorporated into products to enable pedestrians really pleasant experience.

“Reaching 100 cities underscores our commitment to hold NAVTEQ Discover Cities across the major regions in the world,” commented Frank Pauli, Vice President and map content products for NAVTEQ. “NAVTEQ own research shows that consumers rank the use of a pedestrian navigation as one of the most important reasons to consider buying a phone – and we anticipate expanding our coverage of this request.”

Achievement is particularly important today given the thin depth and complexity of pedestrian navigation data specialists collect NAVTEQ, based on a single, global specification. For example, when walking in the cities they study collected more than 50 pedestrian-specific attributes, ranging from footbridges and garden path, to access public transport and stop locations.

The main benefits of a strong NAVTEQ specification and “feet on the street” is the inclusion of “shortcuts” used by local residents to save time. This shortcut can by marked path through the park, plaza, or even buildings accessible to the public – with, of course, time of day restrictions. Without this additional data, the application can generate a route that only involves the sidewalk when, in fact, significantly shortens the possible options.

For example, to achieve a popular tourist destination of the Rotes Rathaus Berlin and St. Marienkirche using S-Bahn, pedestrians will be told to get out on Alexanderplatz. From the station exit, they will be guided walk using shortcuts to frequently used cut green space to provide the most direct route. While appear simple, content and representation of data needed for this type of routing is a formidable challenge and only possible with the Discover Cities.

In order to provide the option to use the public transportation system in a route, a lot of necessary information (positions bus and train station / stop and the entrance / exit; railway network and bus information, and move the location) and should be smooth connected with pedestrian network feet. In addition, public transportation data can enable applications to generate a variety of options so that travelers can make individual choices are correct – for example someone in a hurry to catch a flight to decide whether to drive or take the train offers the fastest route.

Unique combination of insightful data Find help pedestrians navigate the city to their destination through various channels, including those entirely on foot – or (if too far to walk), with a portion of rising public transport. And, using NAVTEQ Discover Cities data, pedestrian navigation applications can also show exactly where to access and exit the public transport system. NAVTEQ to work with public transport operators about the information sources, for example, schedule updates and a new access point applications to help providers deliver the best routing option for pedestrians on the road.

Discover Cities has the leg strength that few devices are commercially available and applications worldwide including: Garmin’s CityXplorer (TM) map, Networks In Motion (NIM) Gokivo (TM) Navigator for BlackBerry and Ovi by Nokia Maps.